What you don’t think about Business Majors: Stephen M. Ross School of Business Edition
We all know the stereotypes. “Rossholes”-or in simpler terms rich assholes who don’t work hard-are the general perception of those in Ross. Picture an attractive college kid, clothed in a Canada Goose jacket and carrying a fancy designer bag. The kids that have an air of arrogance around them. Never to be trusted because they’re all snakes that think everything is a competition and will stab you in the back at the quickest chance.
“Your classes are so easy, I can’t believe that you can go out this weekend. I have so many midterms.”
“You guys don’t even really learn anything anyways right, why’re you stressed out, it’s all on a curve.”
“You wouldn’t understand EECS classes. You’re so lucky that you’re in Ross.”
People I considered friends used to say this to me all the time back when classes and events were in person. To be completely honest, they have a lot of merit to them. Arguably our classes are a lot easier than engineering and LSA classes. Our requirements are more relaxed with what we need to accomplish. We don’t need to take any math classes higher than Calculus 1, we don’t need to take science classes unless we choose to take them, we aren’t even required to learn a language.
Coming into college, I was so excited about clubs. There were so many to choose from, all seemingly with amazing communities that could teach you so much. For those not in Ross or in general a good business school, clubs aren’t like they were in high school. You need to apply, go through (usually) two rounds of interviews, and each club takes 5-20 people depending on the size of the organization. Some take 20/250. Some only take 5/200.
These clubs hold incredible importance. While they wont make or break where you end up working long term, they can get you all the resources needed to recruit successfully for almost anything you want to do, giving you an alumni network of people that are always willing to chat and help you get to where you want to go.
Competition associated with these clubs are almost as fierce as job recruiting. There are so few spots in the most elite clubs. It’s so easy to not get into them and think to yourself, what did I do wrong? How is this person any better or different than me?
Eventually I got into a business fraternity. Alpha Kappa Psi is a premier fraternity at the University of Michigan, only accepting 20 people out of over 200 that apply. I knew one girl. A fierce redhead named Phoebe who was a beast on the Rugby field and a beast in the financial services field. I was terrified of her, but I’ll go to the grave thinking she was the only reason I got into the fraternity.
I imagined at the voting meeting hash (an 8+ hour long meeting where members went through the top 50 candidates and decided which 21-23 to take into the brotherhood) that she wore full metal armor wielding a long sparkling sword, her red hair flying in the wind screaming “Zoe! Zoe! Zoe!” Eventually forcing all the member’s hands to get me into this prestigious organization that I didn’t belong in.
There is a certain level of imposter syndrome that each person in Ross has, not that most would ever show it. When we first entered the school, all students attended a presentation with senior members of the Ross community speaking on their experiences as well as our Dean specifically touching on imposter syndrome. When the whole school is based on competition and being the best, it’s easy to feel as though you’ve fallen behind. Even when you achieve something that was of great importance to you, it never will feel as though it’s enough. Even the most confident successful people within Ross have talked about feeling like an imposter in their own community. The same goes for me in AKPsi.
Here I was with something I had wanted so desperately sitting square in my palms yet I wasn’t satisfied. Here I was, once again inferior. My grades didn’t compare, my achievements weren’t on par-everything just felt like it wasn’t working out.
It threw me in a loop because here I was, sitting with all these incredible people in AKPsi. People that had started successful companies with 2 million dollar valuations. People that were going to Wall Street, Google, Microsoft, and the list could go on and on. I got into this fraternity because someone vouched for me. Put in a good word about how I could be impressive. That I had that potential. Yet here I was, as unimpressive as ever. I felt like at every meeting we attended I was standing there with a sign plastered clearly on my forehead
“I don’t belong here”.
Going into college, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or my career. It was like sitting on a raft in the middle of the ocean, drifting aimlessly until I landed on a small island as just a sack of bones. Unlike other majors however, not knowing or not having the smallest idea of what the future entails is a detriment. There are finance programs that freshmen can do to better prepare them for recruiting, something you wouldn’t even bother looking into if you had no idea you wanted to do finance. You miss all the opportunities and start off a few steps below the other students.
A lot of “Rossholes” are unsure about what they want to do. We have endless options of what we can do, yet for some reason we all end up in consulting or investment banking. Partially because of the pipeline the school gives, but also partially because their recruiting timelines come up the earliest. Jobs that average upward of 70-80 hours a week
Investment banking recruiting for a junior year internship-and hopefully a return offer or full time job-starts in a college student’s second semester sophomore year.
We basically have to recruit for our full time job second semester sophomore year.
No one knows how hard recruiting Investment Banking is unless they go through it. After studying countless hours of the 500 page Breaking into Wall Street guides, you also have to send out upwards of 20 emails each week desperately asking people to coffee chat you in order to have a shot of getting an interview at their bank. Post that, you should be scheduling mock interviews with peers and coaches to make sure once you get into an interview situation, you know what to do.
The studying isn’t the hard part. It’s just a short hurdle that you must fulfill. The upwards of 20 hours won’t mean anything unless you actually secure a job. The real difficult part is the competitive aspect, just like everything in business school. People know who’s gotten an offer, they purposely won’t help you if they also know you’re recruiting, they’ll give false information and try to steer you wrong.
Then people start getting jobs. And you begin to once again question where you fit in at the business school. Clearly, you’re not someone that all the banks want to hire. Does that mean that all your fears are actualized, that you really don’t belong at Ross, in all your clubs, does this mean you won’t get a job? All these thoughts race through Ross minds everyday, and through the minds of countless friends and acquaintances at the school. Once again, the thought echos;
“I don’t belong here”
On the outside, most Ross students look cool and collected. Never letting the enemy into their heads. Unfortunately, I, like many others, am not like that. Some can fake it till they make it. Others let their own insecurities about themselves and how they got here overtake their thoughts. It’ll seep into every fiber of their being and shows up at the worst possible times, exams, interviews, and networking calls. It makes those who think this way look like a worse candidate, only further validating the imposter syndrome that we feel. It’s a vicious cycle that seems to never have an end.
People at Ross may not be taking the most difficult classes, may not be the smartest people that you know, and may not seem to even come close to your college experience. But there are things that come with being a part of the school that others may not ever be able to understand. It’s not just about pure difficulty. It is every single part of being in the school that contribute to the pressure we feel. The competition between peers, the imposter syndrome many people feel, watching others excel while you’re still failing.
I’ll admit it. Sometimes life is easier. But all that being said, going to bed anxious about phone calls, networking, clubs, life, career, and on top of all of that classes isn’t exactly a breeze. Tightly screwing my eyes shut trying to not overthink every single answer that I gave during an interview that I didn’t pass. Hearing echoing voices of people that never believed in me while I try so hard to fall asleep.
Needing to jump over the hurdle of believing in myself, to stop the flood of imposter syndrome encasing my every thought and being. Just to keep moving, one step at a time.
“Eventually I’ll belong”
No No Words
Anti-Culture
No no words aren’t widely accepted in Chinese culture. The normal response is just to power through it. To know that everyone has gone through something and that what you’re feeling isn’t abnormal.
My Wai Po (Grandmother) tried to commit suicide when I was 1 years old. After a party she took some pills hoping to go to sleep and never wake up. She was diagnosed with bipolar depression a few weeks later.
In my culture, we don’t talk about it.
In so many ways I’m incredibly lucky that my parents are who they are. My mother flew back to China to help my grandmother find a suitable therapist and suitable antidepressants. If no one in your life has ever gone through this, you might not know that there isn’t one medication that magically works on everyone. The unfortunate thing about mental health diseases is that there isn’t one drug that cures it all, you have to try a bunch to find one that actually starts to boost your mood. In fact, your mood and life can get a lot worse if you’re not taking the right medications.
My mom stayed in China for half a year cycling through a few different therapists and medications until she found a pair that was suitable for my Wai Po.
My parents are so understanding and for that I’ll be eternally grateful. They understand mental health in a way that I myself may never understand. They are truly the opposite of the Asian stereotype of “unsupportive, never talk about anything, mental health isn’t real” parents.
It’s been almost 20 years since the incident. My Wai Po hasn’t had another issue since. I think part of the reasons are that she has a great support system, three brothers, a husband, and a great pair of daughters that drop everything to make sure my Wai Po is doing well. The same support system we’re lucky enough to share.
Rexulti
There’s a commercial that I used to see on non-cable television. It started when I was pretty young, but I had seen this commercial over a span of 4-5 years, or until I stopped watching television all together. It showed a woman that held a small paddle in her hand. Small enough to resemble a paddle that someone would hold up during an auction to bid on whatever product they were interested in. This paddle however, had a cartoonish smiley face drawn on it and in the commercial the woman would hold it in front of her mouth.
You could see though, in her eyes, she was miserably sad. It was one of those ironic commercials that I would see as a kid, never understanding what it really meant, just knowing that this lady was really sad and she wore a mask to cover up the fact that she was feeling this way.
An antidepressant commercial played on a channel for children’s shows. I don’t know if that’s poetic, foreboding, or just upsetting.
The irony of this was something my therapist uncovered for me later on. I was this lady in the Rexulti commercial. I had been wearing this mask for so long, long before COVID had taken over the world. I wore this fake mask of bubbliness, happiness, friendliness, when all I wanted was to not be present, to tunnel into my queen bed at home and fall asleep until I was happy again.
Vicky
Ages ago when things were normal and I felt like myself, I considered myself a good friend. I cared about people and looked after the people that I cared about. At least I thought I did. My best friend wrote a college application about me. About how I was this active listener, someone he looked up to, and someone he loved. These days I read it and wish I was the person that he had spoken so highly about.
During my Freshman year of college, I had gone to MSU to visit one of my close friends that attended school there. We shared a nice bottle of cheap vodka before she told me something that blew my mind.
There’s a ringing noise in movies when someone tells the main character something heartbreaking. “Someone died”, “there was an accident”, “you have cancer”, “I’m Sorry”. What they don’t tell you is that there’s a real life version of that sound effect. It isn’t the same for everyone, but you’ll know it when you hear it. It’s like a blocking of something that brings forth pain. A mental block of sorts.
“I tried to-”
“Didn’t know who to-”
“Better now.”
It sounds like a children’s show. Bleeping out those words with random other sounds. It rung loudly in my ears.
So I wasn’t that good of a friend after all. I didn’t even notice how horribly one of my friends was struggling. Someone I had traveled with, spent weekends with, blew out birthday candles with. The one thing I had considered my highest strength, torn away instantaneously. My whole life was a lie. If I wasn’t a great friend, and I didn’t have any other prominent strengths, what exactly did I bring to the table?
It was a tough pill to swallow. I sat with it in my mouth for months, trying to find that thing that defined me once again, to no avail. I felt so lost, and so hopeless. Days turned into weeks where I would come back from classes and just lay in my bed with the curtains drawn. Not sleeping, not working, not listening to music. Just laying there.
Life is good
One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was accept that even though my life on paper and on the surface level is excellent, I can still suffer from mental health issues. Thinking about things from a purely logical standpoint, if there’s no reason for a cold – you never exposed yourself to someone else with a cold, you never stood out in the freezing weather in shorts and a t-shirt, you never even left a cozy plastic bubble- there’s no chance you have the cold.
When life is excellent, how is it possible to suffer from mental illnesses?
The other situation that I found incredibly difficult was trying to tell my parents, the people that had given me everything and more, that I was suffering. Knowing that they would be incredibly supportive made it even more difficult to try to express how I was feeling.
This is how I would repay them for putting food in my mouth, clothing me, giving me not only a roof over my head but also my own room, even paying for college. How could I tell my parents this issue I was having without them thinking that maybe it had something to do with them-which it absolutely did not.
The more I tried to keep it in, the more closed off I got. With friends, family, anyone that wanted to talk. I felt more and more isolated.
But life was good.
Couldn’t ask for more.
Things were fine.
Therapy
My parents called me out of the blue after an exam that went particularly horribly. I was sitting in my basically empty apartment down bad. Picking up the facetime, it only took 1 minute and 24 seconds before tears were welling up in my eyes, my voice choked up so bad that I couldn’t even speak.
The emotions coated my tongue, making it basically impossible for me to even tell them what was wrong, what was happening. I felt lightheaded. My tear coated cheeks heavily weighing down the inside of my mouth. Sentences were futile as I just choked out bits and pieces of words and phrases.
I felt so defeated. Unable to continue an endless charade any longer.
Still in this moment, I couldn’t bear to tell them. But somehow, on a miracle, they just knew.
“Maybe you should get some professional help… We want to help you, but it might be best to talk to someone who knows how to handle these situations.”
I went to my first therapy appointment a week after that conversation.
My first real exhale in what felt like years.