Letters to the Editor
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Does anyone know this person?
Ok...here's the problem I have with a column like this. Not only do we have Cary's advice, but the multi-directional advice of all the Dear Abby wannabees out there (and there are many). About half of you are saying stick it out, and the other half are saying get out and do something different. But let's see a show of hands...how many who have offered advice know this person? I mean how many of you KNOW her...not how many think you know her because her situation sounds like something you or someone you know went through. You're offering life-changing, possibly life-ruining advice to someone based on a short letter, instead of years of talking and listening to her as her friend. Why do you presume that you know what advice will be best for her? Does no one see anything wrong with this?
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Terrible, terrible advice.
How much is another year of this hell going to cost you in student loans? How many years of your life are you going to have to spend working at a job you hate because you made one bad decision?
The same thing happened to me except it was law school. My debt load wasn't as heavy as yours, but I still owe a *lot* of money for that one bad year. But I didn't see the point of continuing to borrow ever-larger sums of money to be able to get a job I didn't want just so I could pay back that money.
You only get to go around once. You don't have to spend your time being this miserable.
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I don't know her but....
Isn't this what advice columns are for? At some point in their lives, a lot of Cary's readers are going to be faced with a similiar, if not perfectly identical, situation. The purpose of this feature is not to offer them "the" answer but a whole range of possible answers from which they can find the one which suits them best.
Of course, let's be honest here. It's also gives people like me a chance to be snarky and high-handed but hey, you gotta take the good with the bad.
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Keep at it...
...but write escape plans. Write lots of escape plans. When you're locked in the cubicle and the flood of tears is just easing up, when you can't look at that book for another second, when the grades and averages circulate and you shouldn't have looked but you did and you shouldn't let it get to you but you are... pull out an escape plan and start working on it. Have a dozen on hand. Make them detailed. Do the research. Talk to people in the know. List all the steps.
Maybe you'll write all these escape plans and never press the big red button on any of them. Maybe one day you'll be looking at one of them and the fog will melt away and you'll feel with utter, perfect clarity that Yes, This Is The Path.
Also write plans where you see it through, somehow: where you grit your teeth and get it done for the sake of what comes next, where you finish this semester and then decide what to do, where you transfer, where you take a semester off and then get back to it, where you just get to the end of the week with your sanity intact. I think you can see it through, but you can't see how you'll see it through. Your view right now is of two options that you can't bear, so expand your horizons until you have a hundred different paths before you. That's what you need to see.
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Escape with your sanity while you still have your soul!
Mr. Tennis is an idiot.
MBA programs are the way they are for a reason: to cull the herd for the "Real World" of being a soulless corporate drone. The real corporate world is a totally amoral environment where the only "ethic" is the bottom line - where turning an ever-increasing profit justifies any behavior. If that suits you: Stay the course.
If you think you are unhappy now, try wasting the rest of your youth working twelve hours a day - and probably weekends - to make other people wealthy. That is, more wealthy. There is more to life than money and a cool car. At the end of the day it is love and friendship that save us from the abyss - to pass up the marriage of a lifelong friend to study for a midterm is a decision that will haunt you for years after you have forgotten what your grade was on that exam.
Escape while you still have a chance for a happy life.
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The thing about an MBA program...
... is that what you get out of it isn't really cool knowledge about FASB and org behavior. It's all about the network and the connections, and if LW is weeping in the bathroom stalls and projecting an air of misery and hatred to all around her, she is unlikely to be top of mind when people are thinking about opportunities, to say the least.
This semester is paid for, so she might as well stick it out and see if she can put on a happy face. If she is still miserable when the next bill comes, then she can walk away.
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Run, don't walk, away
Dear LW,
I going to add my voice to the chorus of people who advocate that you drop out of your MBA program. If you are so miserable and heartsick, you've got to pay attention to that. No amount of gritting your teeth and hanging in there is going to get you to the life you really want. In fact, it will only take you further away.
I was like you a couple of years ago. I got into Columbia, was totally excited but in the first month I knew that the whole MBA thing wasn't my thing. A mistake? No, because having that experience clarified what I REALLY wanted out of life, which was start my own business in Europe. I finished the first year of the MBA and then moved back to Europe. I didn't go back the second year. Now I am trying to get a small business off the ground and I'm working a series of odd jobs to make ends meet. My current salary is a fraction of what I would've been earning with the MBA but I tell you what, I am so much happier and freeer, even though I have this debt to pay back. The debt I incurred, I tapped into my 401k funds to help pay some of it down, but the rest of it will have to wait.
Cary's advice that you suck it up and hang in there is really bad advice. In fact, if he were a shrink, it would be grounds for malpractice. Listen to what your heart is saying and don't look back. You will be so thankful.