1 down. 3 to go.

Well, I made it. Barely. My first semester of the MBA program is officially done. I really can't believe it.

This semester has been full of ups and down emotionally. One of the things about being in b-school that I never anticipated was the toll it would take on my self esteem and my self identity. I've always seen myself as a pretty intelligent person; definitely not brilliant, but at least above-average. This semester made me unfortunately question that a bit.

Now I knew that business school was going to be tough. I was going to be challenged and stretched in ways I never could have imagined. I was going to have to work harder than I'd ever worked before. I knew I was going to have to push myself to do my very best.

But what I didn't know was that my best was not going to be good enough. That pushing myself to the edge of my abilities was still not going to be enough. Naturally the feelings of inadequacy and "do I really belong here?" start to come out. There are so many talented people in this program that I sometimes wonder if I'm in over my head.

But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. This semester has shown me that I need to make a few changes. The rest of you probably figured this out a long time ago, but apparently I am a little slow. I still need to learn to see myself based more on my individual accomplishments instead of in comparison to others. My self esteem needs to be more focused on internal elements that are constant, rather than external forces that are always changing and out of my control.

I've had the last few weeks to decompress, process the experiences of the previous four months and spend quite a bit of time reflecting on how to make this next semester different/better. My grades were not as good as I would have liked, but I'm determined to do better this time around. I'm sure I will pick up a few things every semester and by the time I finally graduate maybe I'll figure this whole business school thing out.

Here goes nothing....