I've never wanted do disassociate myself so much from business students.
As I came back from my exchange, I couldn't help to start noticing certain traits common to most business students that I've encountered:
Yes, we get it. You're a business student that has internships and a job lined up so you're extremely busy. You're so busy you can't meet for group works. You're so busy that you have to get up at 5 in the morning. Like a rooster, you also have to let everyone around you know that you're up early, that you're super ambitious, and that you're inevitably, one day, going to be extremely rich. Your ego doesn't fit through the door, and why should it? After all, you're going to obtain that precious bachelor degree soon enough.
Soon, you'll be entitled to boss around those poor employees trying to make a living. Soon, you'll be bossed around yourself. You'll hate it. It will make you angry. You'll take that anger and dump in on your friends. You'll swim in it like a fish in nuclear waste. It will consume you. Yet for some reason, you're proud that you're so busy. Somehow, this makes you better than others. Those peasants aren't busy. They don't wake up at 5 in the morning. They must be lazy. You don't understand how these people don't have the drive to succeed, how they can possibly let themselves go and... relax?
2. Stress is Good?
This is one thing I'm never going to understand. Business students always work on projects at the last second. I can only assume because if they didn't it would break their mental image of super busy people with many, many things to do. Honestly, they might be the busiest students, but they aren't the most productive ones. Someone should teach them the value of splitting up work into smaller tasks (which is really something you'd assume business students would be good at).
Another aspect of their stressful life is their neuroticism during exam periods. It's as if they enjoyed being stressed and complaining about how hard they had to study for this exam. They form clubs of stressors. They post garbage on social media about how tough student life is and how they are going to fail everything. All of this instead of just sucking it up, studying a bit each day (with no distractions) and actually listening in class.
3. Life Goals
I've asked a few of them about their life goals. Needless to say, I'd much rather hear "I don't know" (which is my answer) than their "to be filthy rich". What drives them to study is their ambitions of a future paycheck. They don't have any interest in accounting. How could they? That has to be the most boring job on the planet. But it pays the bills. It pays them well. Because of that, they become void of all interests that aren't related to their program of study. They have no hobbies, no passions and no desire to learn something 'useless'. They become extremely narrow minded and look down upon those who dare use their imagination or suggest something less lucrative for the sake of fun.
Some of them will argue that they do have fun. They'll say "I go out with friends all the time". We all know what that means though. "My friends and I have nothing better to do than to drink our self-induced stress away because we actually have no mutual interests" would probably be an equivalent statement. This brings us to our next topic, friendship.
4. Friendships
Being friends with a business student ironically enough feels like a business deal. They will be friends with you as long as they can have some kind of benefit from your friendship. There are countless people that have lost contact with me because they no longer needed my help (whether it be notes or even moral support). These people were so friendly when we had class together. So eager to share and compare our notes and grades. They still act friendly if you run into them, but deep down, you know that there has never been any real friendship. I don't know why I'm surprised though. These are the same people that label "meeting new people" as "establishing new connections and expanding our network". Truth be told I didn't really miss any of these 'business friends' while my stay in Sweden. I can guarantee that they didn't miss me either. Some of them didn't even know I was gone.
If you take it one step further and attempt to date one of them, you might be in for a big surprise. If you're a guy, she might be extra flirty to get some notes. She might even suggest you "study together" which normally just means coffee date. Not with them it doesn't. While looking at couples at a business school I can only wonder if they compare their investment portfolios instead of foreplay.
