the room doesn't open just because you're in the building
i went into business school with a quiet assumption i'd never have admitted out loud: that the network was part of the package. you get in, you pay the tuition, and the rooms open. the alumni, the warm intros, the deals - included.
it doesn't work like that.
the brand on the door gets you proximity, not relationships. you can spend two years inside one of the best networks in the world and leave with almost none of it, because nobody hands you a person. the skills that felt optional, walking up to a stranger, following up when it's awkward, showing up to the thing on a tuesday night when you'd rather not - turn out to be the entire mechanism. the school just put the right people in the same zip code. closing the last few feet was always on me.
that's the part that doesn't fit on a resume. "Darden MBA" goes on the line. what i actually learned - that access is a verb, that proximity isn't relationship, that the comfort zone is where a network goes to die— none of that has a credential.
i'm a little embarrassed it took me this long to see it. but i'd rather say it plainly, for whoever's about to make the same quiet assumption i did: the building doesn't open the room. you do.
my Darden MBA wasn't just an education; it was a transformation.
i documented this journey in detail in the link below if you’d like to know more.
Abigail Falknor