Getting over FOMO, Learning to Learn, and Friendships over Food

In August 2021, on the cusp of starting my MBA, I wondered:

1. Would I find my balance and do all that I wanted during MIT Sloan’s intense Core Semester — well-known for its academic rigor alongside recruiting, student clubs, entrepreneurship, and social events?

2. Would I struggle with accounting, finance and DMD (data, models and decisions)? I had not studied them before, while many of my classmates had.

3. Would I make good friends? I mean genuine connections beyond superficialities, to the authentic self?

Three months later and the Core is over. Final exams took place last week, and with the flick of a weekend, Cambridge has emptied out. The annual ritual, this transient furlough of itinerant students — where many flock to family and warmer climes.

At the end of the year, I have three reflections to these questions.

1 //

Early in the Semester, an alumni who started his own company while at Sloan shared that the best advice he could give was to get over FOMO early — pursue what you want and accept that there will be trade-offs. He wished that he had done it sooner. How true. There were often many events going on at the same time, from morning to evening, every day. Having so much choice is a privilege, but it also called for discernment and discipline— holding myself accountable by sticking to my priorities and constantly asking myself why I am doing something.

For everyone comes in prioritizing different things and having different goals. If I measured myself by someone else’s actions, what they did or did not do (for we can only judge what is visible), that was the surest way to go off-track from my own goals. This could be especially distorted when filtered through the lens of Instagram or hearsay, because it creates what a friend calls “useless FOMO” — FOMO to no end, neither fulfilment nor pleasure, but a lingering unease and perhaps even a quiet despair. As in business school, as in life. Can we live feeling like we’ve done everything that was on our hearts, with no regrets with the time that we’ve been given, and satisfied with the trade-offs that we’ve made?

2 //

I had no experience with accounting, finance and DMD, and I was worried initially was that I would not do well in midterms and finals. I had to remind myself many times that this exam-oriented goal was not mine. I wanted to learn these subjects — and when learning is the goal, then the test is whether I knew something at the end that I did not know at the first.

Growing up, the dominant paradigm that I encountered towards education was a utilitarian one. A person should strive to do well in school, get good grades, then go a good university if possible, which would lead to a well-paying job, comfort and security. This paradigm is a well-meaning one, but is simplistic and even wrong if taken as the telos of learning and human flourishing.

Because learning means to learn. Grades could be a reflection of that (a well-designed test would sieve that out), but one knows what one does. I could memorize and regurgitate the correct answer but to understand a concept and apply it is different altogether. I’m glad that I’ve learned these topics, because I would have struggled to complete them on my own through online courses, and I’m glad that financial statements do not faze me now, nor do capital structure and option pricing, optimization problems, or using R to run regressions on big data sets 😄

3 //

I loved introducing my classmates to Singaporean food**, but I enjoyed the friendships formed over the dining table even more. Some conversations opened our lives to each other, and with authenticity and vulnerability comes understanding and empathy. So food opens doors, and even creates community.

I’ve seen how hungry we are for connection — even more today where Covid has refined our notions of value around people, work, and things. We crave solidarity and the human touch, yet it has also become more elusive and uncertain— ironically when we are more connected technologically than ever before. Building community through dining together is something I want to lean into more next semester.

**Note: for those interested in culinary matters, the Singaporean food that I made for various supper clubs included Har Jeong Kai (fried prawn-paste chicken), my grandma’s own Zhai Choy recipe (vegetable stew, like a Chinese ratatouille), the iconic Singapore Laksa (spicy noodle soup), Teochew Gu Chai Kueh (steamed chive dumplings in crystal skin), Nasi Lemak (coconut rice, with fried chicken and long beans), Beef Rendang (slow-cooked beef in a thick, spicy coconut broth).

[First published on Medium on Dec 22 2021]