Opening Week at Darden

Abstract

This case describes the experience of five MBA students beginning their two-year residential program. The students are members of a learning team, and each is experiencing challenges orienting to the new program and to her or his teammates. Excerpt UVA-OB-1296 Aug. 9, 2019 Opening Week at Darden Jackson Bates Jackson Bates was contemplating his experience during Opening Week so far and was really excited about what was ahead for him at the Darden School of Business. Even as a child, Bates's father had talked to him about the importance of understanding business and of being responsible and successful financially. He remembered his father—a very successful executive who had worked his way up the corporate ladder from the bottom—giving him tips on how to handle money and on how to deal with people. Bates was an eclectic intellect. As a University of Virginia (UVA) undergraduate, he had enjoyed reading Shakespeare and Faulkner in his literature classes as much as the spreadsheets he studied as a business major at the McIntire School of Commerce. Once he arrived at Darden, one of his goals was to meet a variety of classmates and build the kind of strong network he had heard was the hallmark of the Darden experience. He had been pretty successful at it in many ways. He had met three fellow 'Hoos—two of whom he had met four years earlier, when he was in his fourth year at UVA. He also met two fraternity brothers from other colleges and felt a certain comfort that there would be some guys with whom he felt an automatic bond. Finally, he was most pleased with the classmates he met who shared his career interest in investment banking (I-banking). He definitely wanted to share experiences and notes. Bates felt pretty good about these aspects of his networking. But he wanted to do better in a couple of other instances. . . .