MitaliPOV

Danielle Mitalipov (MBA ’25) offers advice to conflicted MBA students in Issue No. 2. 

This marks the second edition of the Harbus advice column, MitaliPOV, where we answer anonymous questions on topics ranging from career woes to romantic dilemmas. Creative liberties are taken with student signatures, but otherwise these queries are directly from HBS students!

How do I focus on a narrow set of recruiting opportunities instead of trying to maximize optionality and go after every type of job? What will it take to convince myself that focusing on one thing is better? How do I address the underlying insecurity? – Obsessed with Optionality

Dear Obsessed,

Your quandary is not a unique one, especially at an institution that teaches us to calculate the financial value of an option – in fact, you’ve just so happened to ask for advice from the publication that coined the term “FOMO” in 2004! I would be remiss, therefore, not to cite HBS finance professor Mihir A. Desai, who penned an excellent piece for The Harvard Crimson titled “The Trouble with Optionality”: 

The comfort of a high-paying job at a prestigious firm surrounded by smart people is simply too much to give up. When that happens, the dreams that those options were meant to enable slowly recede into the background. For a few, those destinations are in fact their dreams come true – but for every one of those, there are ten entrepreneurs, artists, and restaurateurs that get trapped in those institutions…they fail to understand that all of these intervening choices will change them fundamentally – and they are, in fact, the sum total of those choices.

In short, the mindset of maximizing optionality obscures the fact that perpetually putting off life decisions is itself a choice that closes off possibilities. Of course, if a rubber stamp is a prerequisite to achieving or clarifying your goals, that can be a perfectly reasonable short-term tradeoff. However, it doesn’t sound like a necessary one in your case. To me, your letter indicates that you know what you want to do (which is a wonderful and rare position to be in!) but are wavering about whether to pursue it directly. Perhaps some zealous recruiters have promised you that XYZ years of experience at their company will open any subsequent door you desire. 

Don’t be swayed by their siren song, which is masterfully composed to lead risk-averse MBAs into the Options Labyrinth (or, in the words of Dr. Seuss, “The Waiting Place”). It is all too easy to get lost there – humans are, unfortunately, remarkably good at justifying the path of least resistance, which often entails extending a detour to our dreams until it becomes the final destination. The infamous golden handcuffs contribute to this insidious phenomenon, but so too does the simple reality that every passing year you spend accruing rubber stamps for the thing you actually want to do is, well, another year you spent not doing that thing! As the saying goes, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Worse yet, you will likely start slowly drifting farther away from the person you want to be, as Professor Desai points out. 

This risk scales exponentially with the degree of disconnect between your dream job and your in-between job: the longer we spend immersing ourselves in a certain context, the harder it is to imagine any other way to be. This is the thesis of David Foster Wallace’s thought-provoking 2005 commencement speech “This is Water,” which I’ll also draw from here:

Everybody worships….But the insidious thing about [most] forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

If you must enter the Options Labyrinth, take a page out of Ariadne’s book and mark your escape route with a trail of golden thread or, in your case, with clear goals and a set timeframe. But don’t forget Professor Desai’s mathematically sound wisdom about life paths: “The shortest distance between two points is reliably a straight line.” 

__________

I want to have a strong friendship with some of my sectionmates but something always feels competitive (whether it be for grades, relationships, or career options). How do I go about building a deeper relationship without those big mitigators? – Exhausted by Envy

Dear Exhausted,

Jealousy is a hard emotion to reckon with partially because it’s so stigmatized – most of us spend our lives trying to lock away the “green-eyed monster.” Perhaps the first step to doing so, however, is to set aside our shame and look it straight in the eyes. I applaud you for doing so with this letter! In fact, you’ve inspired me to admit that I am writing and rewriting this article partly in an effort to avoid drafting my Whatsapp section update. My summer has not exactly gone as planned, and although I know it’s silly, I’m dreading sharing a recap after spending the past few weeks reading impressive updates from my sectionmates.

The truth is envy is a perfectly normal emotion (we are social animals after all, so trying to understand how we stack up to others is only natural), and like all emotions, it is not intrinsically right or wrong. Before taking action, I’d encourage you to sit with that feeling for a few moments. What is it trying to tell you? Could it be a signal of a deeper insecurity you’re wrestling with? You mention noticing competition surrounding grades, relationships, and careers – do any of these areas feel especially prickly to you? It’s worth digging into these potentially uncomfortable root causes, if only because acknowledging them is the first step to overcoming them. In the process, you might find that some of that envy will naturally dissipate. 

However, you might find that your dilemma is influenced, or at least exacerbated, by external factors. For all its virtues, there are few places that breed more competition and concern with status than the corporate world, and since business school is a microcosm of the corporate world, it’s not unusual to feel that dynamic seeping into your section classroom. It’s always helpful to be cognizant of the fact that your peers, despite being very accomplished and impressive, are only human. Like you, they struggle with doubt and insecurity, and perhaps they are trying to disguise those feelings with the occasional humble brag disguised as a class comment or Instagram post. So take those markers with a grain of salt, and try to remind yourself that life is not a zero-sum game and that you, too, have a lot to offer (I know this is easier said than done – I’m obviously having trouble taking my own advice at the moment). 

Rest assured that you and your sectionmates have plenty of time to drop your guard and share some vulnerability, especially if you are an RC. Doing that with ninety people is a nigh impossible task for some, so try to get to know others individually or one-on-one. In my experience, sometimes leaving the bubble of campus helps to speed along bonding. But most of all, take a deep breath and trust that you will find friends at HBS sooner or later – just as the universe tends towards entropy and evolution converges into crabs, life inevitably yields friendship for those who open themselves to connection. As those relationships flourish, know that the occasional impulse for comparison is bound to happen, even with the people we love. I hope you don’t mistake this inevitable aspect of the human experience for evidence that you are not worthy of friendship. If you find yourself struggling with guilt about these thoughts, it can help to flip the script slightly: you’ve simply noticed something you admire about your friend, something I’d wager drew you to them in the first place! Try sharing the compliment with them instead of privately ruminating on it. As a bonus, you might find it draws you both closer. 

Danielle Mitalipov (MBA ‘25) is an RC interested in both sustainability and entertainment & media. She is a Student Sustainability Associate (SSA), and helped organize the HBS Climate Symposium. Prior to HBS, she studied philosophy at Stanford University, and led merchandising for a global brand at adidas. Outside of school, she is usually writing or watching the latest release at the Coolidge Corner Theater.