Things I Learned In Business School

Mrs. Machine and I were talking the other day, and the talk turned to Sparta.

She told me how Spartan training of their young men consisted of giving them less food than they required, to make them steal food from others. If they were caught, there was a Spartan beatdown. * This ultimately had the effect of weeding out the weak and making sure the resultant force was crafty and strong.

We have such a system in business school, too. It's called "The Curve." At my institution, the first-year curve demands that no more than 25% of the students can get an A in a desired class, and no less than 10% can get a C. So, yeah, people cheat. Fortunately, the curve more or less goes away in the second year.

The difference is, at the end of the day, the Spartans had a cohesive, bonded fighting force that was willing to stand with only 300 against an entire army of Persians. Today, if I had to stand with my class against the Persians...I wouldn't be sure who to aim at.

And that brings us to today's "Thing I Learned In Business School": Don't trust the bastards.

I'm not saying everybody in business school is a bastard, but the percentage is a lot higher than in the general population. There are people who will cheat, who will not pull their weight on team assignments, and who will simply go after other people for no reason. They pretty much identify themselves early on in B-school, and are proud of it. I've also found that GMAT scores are strongly correlated to the level of bastardity. I did some research, and have the graph to prove my point:



The Bastardity Index ranges from 0-10, with 10 being Ken Lay, and 0 being Jesus (who, funny story, was an actual bastard).

My remedy: Ostracization. Find some non-bastard allies and mock the living hell out of the bastards. Make fun of them behind their backs. Sure, it's juvenile, but what would you rather be: juvenile, or a bastard?

In the end, you have to watch out for yourself. If you can go to sleep at night knowing you have a soul, you're going to do just fine. And that's another Thing I Learned In Business School.



* Odd coincidence: My elementary grade school mascot was the Spartan.