(123rf.com image)

I used business school as a means to change countries, coming from the U.K. to the U.S. for a two-year stint at Wharton Business School in 1992, with every intention of staying in America permanently afterwards.

Now, of course, if you are studying, you will have exams and tests, and the reviewer theoretically has to follow some sort of guidelines in assigning grades. Of course, this is trickier and more subjective for subjects outside of science and math (although I suspect Galileo got an F at the University of Pisa for his “earth is a sphere” theoretical physics paper). 

In Marketing, a teaching assistant (meaning a student from the second year of the MBA program) marked my first paper. I know this because he came up to me and said, “I marked your Marketing mid-term and gave you a B.” I was extremely pissed off, not least because I had rejected the advances of this same student only weeks earlier. When I got the paper back, I booked a meeting with the course professor. I thought all marketing theory was utter nonsense anyway, and I was as good at making an argument for any specific strategy as the next Brit. 

“Why did I get a B?” I demanded, furiously, “My paper was brilliant.” 

The professor read it in front of me and agreed that it should have been graded A and he would increase my grade. 

“Your ideas are just so out-of-the-box,” he said to me. “You can’t be graded by a TA because they don’t understand it. From now on, I will grade your work myself.” 

I didn’t really care whether what he was saying was true or not, I just cared about getting a high grade. He was happy, I was happy, and I never got below an A in that course again. All this proves that either marketing is total BS, or that perfectly justifiable opinions can be too varied for a consensus on quality. My money is on the former. 

Since I had waived out of stats, I could take on a new class of my own choice. I chose Business Russian because, if you can do a language, always do a language. I already spoke the language since I had studied it for four years at secondary school and my first job post Cambridge was in Moscow, but I wanted to improve my skills. The course was awful. The teacher was a disaster. He just read through the book passages and made us answer the questions at the end for homework. He gave no explanation of linguistics or etymology in teaching us the business vocabulary – probably because he made no attempt to teach us business vocabulary.

To my outrage, at the end of the year, and before he had graded the final paper, he made us write a review of his class which he collected from us in the classroom. There was no way I could tell the truth because I knew he would be reading what I wrote. I felt I had to give him a “very good” grade mark. This goes against the very nature of my being, which is certainly outspoken and demanding, but also extremely honest. I was simply being pragmatic, but I felt terrible. Is it too late to ask to redo the review?

Most of the courses had fairly clear marking criteria. In Macroeconomics, you were allowed to take in a piece of paper with all the formulae you wanted on it as “the test was not about memorizing,” said the professor. I brought in one 8.5 by 11 inch page as allowed, with the teeny-tiniest writing on it that had every formula, every case example, every explanation. I didn’t understand a bloody thing – and, let’s be honest, neither do macroeconomists, or we would not have all the problems with economies all over the world that no one has solved, not even the Nobel Prize winners. However, I could refer to my notes for everything. In class, I had made my opinions on the value of the course quite clear by giving specific counterexamples to whatever the professor advocated. When I met with him a few days after the final exam to get my paper back and my grade, he reached into his filing cabinet and pulled out my work. 

“You got 95 percent!” he said astonished, “That can’t be right!” He had not seen my exam paper before as this was yet another paper marked by a teaching assistant. He looked over every answer I had. 

“Yes, the grade is correct,” he conceded sheepishly, “Well done! I guess you don’t think macroeconomic analyses are all stupid then, after all?” 

“No, no, of course, I do,” I said, “I am just very good at repeating stupid back exactly as it is taught.”

I took an Entrepreneurship class in my second semester. The professor told us that if we were working in a company and wanted to design a new product, like a new toaster for example, we should call up every competitor making that product, tell them that we were university students writing research papers and ask if we could have a sample and a copy of their blueprints. Then we should ask everything possible about the advantages and issues with the product. I put up my hand. 

“Yes, Janet?” They all knew my name pretty quickly into each course. 

“Is that ethical?” I asked loudly. 

Of course, I was not really asking the question. I was making the point in front of the whole class that the professor was suggesting we do something that was not ethical. Everyone laughed. It wasn’t exactly a smart thing to do – I guess being fearless has its cost – because from then on, I went from being an A-grade student to a B-grade student in that class, just like that. I didn’t care. We, the students, had just taken a required Ethics course so I should have probably also asked that professor if he wanted to take it, too, since it would clearly be an enormous benefit to him.

In another class, the professor invited engineering company CEOs to visit each week and discuss their issues. One time, I put up my hand and answered a question from the CEO. (Mostly, I just put up my hand to make witty comments.) The CEO was talking about how to motivate his employees. One suggested paying them more or offering them more vacation. “Do you think that would work, Janet?” the CEO asked me. 

“Nope, I’d just give them each a computer to take home at weekends,” I deadpanned, to uproarious laughter. If you can’t be good, be funny.

Keith, our Microeconomics teacher, was a total hippie. He decided that it would be great for all the students in the class to agree not to take the final paper and get the same grade and just a “Pass” rather than be graded on the quality of our final exam paper. All those who wanted to take part, could. I certainly did not want to take part. I was smart and worked hard, I wanted my specific grade not a communist shared equal workers scenario.

For the sake of the rest of the class, since only two of us had not signed, I agreed to play the silly game. It spread like wildfire the moment I signed up, and all the students were super-excited as they thought it validated the process. Not at all. Life is a competition and there are grades. Get used to it. Also, I knew what I was giving up. I was never going to get a High Distinction in Business Russian with that boob of a teacher, so I really needed a High Distinction in Microeconomics or I would not be a Palmer Scholar (the highest annual prize). You needed 80 percent of your grades to be HD to get that.

I took the Microeconomics exam anyway and got 94 percent, well above any HD grade requirement. I accepted my P for Pass grade – and indeed, that was the reason I did not get that prize. If I had got the HD, I would have got the Palmer Scholar designation, but I decided to take one for the people. When I was the next communist President of Russia, my people would thank me for it. My friend Nigam once told me, “Janet, you sacrifice tact for wit.” I thanked him but then he explained that it was not a compliment. How confusing. This time I had sacrificed my scholarship for the desire of the people – I can’t say, “For the good of the people,” as I thought the whole thing was so totally pointless. As Einstein so wisely said, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” I think this quote is more brilliant than the theory of relativity, and it has sustained me in some of my darkest hours.

We also had one of the first marketing simulation models, of which Wharton was very proud. It was called MarkStrat. If I hadn’t thought marketing was a piece of shit before using that model, I certainly did afterwards. We played in teams, competing against each other via the model inputting pricing strategy and other decisions. I felt very disengaged. When we were informed one of our imaginary employees at our company was behaving badly and showing up late to work every day, I shrieked, “Fire their ass!” The others were kinder and wanted to give them a second chance. So we did. The employee ended up stealing data and costing us millions.

Funnily enough, a big learning for me in business is that you always fire too slowly, giving second chances that don’t work out and do indeed cost you millions in lost revenue or wasted costs. Performance plans rarely work. You simply cannot change the inherent nature of an employee. If they have a bad attitude, they must leave immediately as you cannot change character. If they don’t have the skills for their particular job, they can sometimes be moved to a different department and be successful. Mostly they and you are both better off if they continue their career elsewhere. I can assure you that I never shrieked, “Fire their ass!” though. Having been both firer and firee at different times, I always gave a much more sympathetic response and a pep talk for their next career step.

We had a new course – in Leadership. I found the professor very timid. At the end of the year, in the final class, I stood on a chair and read out a poem to him that ended every verse with “But we do still love you, Stu!” and I got the class to say that line along with me every chorus. It was extremely mocking of everything we had supposedly learned. I proudly gave Stu a copy at the end of the recital. I don’t think he had a clue what to make of it, or me. We’re back in touch now. He wants me to be on his distribution list for his blog. It’s probably not a good idea.

So what did I get out of this prestigious business school in the end? It’s obvious: a new job in a new country and at a higher salary by far than I made before, plus a load of friends across the entire U.S. and internationally. I’d call that a triple win.

Janet Lewis Matricciani is a two-time CEO who has worked all over the world and is multilingual, now sharing her business lessons publicly. She can be reached at [email protected].