Six months in: what Chicago Booth is actually changing about how I think

I am two quarters into Chicago Booth now, and the most useful thing I can say is that the school is changing me in more ordinary ways than I expected.

I have written separately about specific classes and competitions. This post is not a recap of those. It is about the quieter shifts underneath them: what Booth has exposed in how I work, where I was relying on instinct too much, and what I am trying to correct while I am still in the middle of it.

I came to Booth expecting sharper frameworks. I did get those. What I did not expect was how often the experience would force me to confront the gap between sounding clear and actually being clear, between being busy and being effective, and between wanting more from the environment and truly showing up for it.

1. Booth exposed the difference between fluency and preparation

Before Booth, I would have described myself as rigorous. Looking back, a more honest description is that I was often fluent. I could speak confidently, connect ideas quickly, and work my way through ambiguity in real time. That skill is useful, but it can also hide a lack of preparation.

The clearest example came in the second quarter when I applied for a co-chair role in the Booth Product Management Club. I was genuinely interested in the role, and my application was shortlisted. I got the interview.

I did not prepare properly.

I went in assuming I could think through the questions on the spot. Within a few minutes, I could feel the problem. I was giving versions of answers rather than answers. I knew what I meant in my head, but I was not expressing it with the clarity the moment required. I did not get selected.

It was disappointing, but it was also clarifying. Booth did not create that weakness. It just made it harder to hide. In an environment where many people are smart, motivated, and prepared, fluency alone stops being a differentiator very quickly.

That experience changed something practical for me. I am less interested now in whether I can "handle it live" and more interested in whether I have done the work before I walk into the room. Preparation is not separate from performance. It is usually the reason performance looks calm.

2. I am thinking much harder about where my effort actually goes

One moment from the first quarter still feels uncomfortably familiar. I had coursework piling up, competition work moving in parallel, group messages constantly active, and a calendar full enough to make me feel productive before I had actually produced much of anything. I remember bouncing from one tab to another, one deliverable to another, and quietly taking pride in how overloaded I was.

But being overloaded is not the same as being effective.

That stretch forced me to see something I had not named clearly enough before: I was often using motion as a substitute for prioritization. Because I was working hard, I assumed I was working well. Because I was tired, I assumed I was making the right tradeoffs. Booth exposed how flimsy that logic is.

I saw the pattern in different ways across classes, competitions, and project work. In some places, I was spreading attention too broadly. In others, I was underestimating what good work in that setting actually required. The pace at Booth makes those mistakes visible quickly. It becomes obvious when your effort is fragmented instead of concentrated.

So the lesson for me has not been "do less" in a vague self-help sense. It has been: choose more deliberately. If I commit to something, I want to know what real follow-through will cost. If I do not have the bandwidth to meet that standard, the better decision is usually not to squeeze it in anyway. It is to say no earlier.

That sounds obvious, but I do not think I was living it consistently before.

What has changed is my tolerance for performative busyness. Booth gives you endless ways to stay active, involved, and overstretched. There is always another event, another competition, another conversation, another reason to tell yourself that motion equals progress. Sometimes it does. Often it does not.

I am trying to get better at asking a harder question: what is actually worth concentrated effort right now?

3. The environment raised my standard for commitment

Another thing Booth has made clear is that the baseline here is real.

When I think back on the first two quarters, one pattern stands out. In the moments when my teams were genuinely prepared, aligned, and invested, the work had energy behind it. In the moments when we entered something half-committed or mentally drained, the gap showed almost immediately.

I do not mean that every good effort gets rewarded or every weak effort fails. That is not how life works. What I mean is that Booth is an environment where loose preparation gets exposed quickly. There is not much cushioning. The field is too strong for that.

That has been useful for me because it removes excuses. A lot of environments let you blur the line between "I got unlucky" and "I was not ready." Booth is less forgiving in that way. It makes the second category easier to recognize.

There is something healthy about that. It has made me more honest with myself before I commit. If I want to do something well, I need to respect the preparation it requires. If I cannot do that, I would rather learn to be more selective than keep repeating the same cycle.

This is not really a lesson about competition. It is a lesson about standards.

4. I underestimated how much the community would matter

I came to Booth mostly for intellectual sharpening. I expected the classes to matter. I expected the frameworks to matter. I was more skeptical about the softer language people use around "community" and "network."

I still do not think the value is in networking in the superficial sense. What I have come to appreciate is something more concrete: the quality of thought changes when you are working alongside people whose instincts were shaped in very different environments than yours.

One of the best examples of that for me came during the Booth Hackathon. One of our teammates, Ludmilla, came from a very different background than the rest of us. That mattered. We made a real effort to include her perspective in how we framed the product instead of defaulting to the assumptions the more technical members of the team already shared. The result was better because the framing got broader and sharper at the same time.

That is the version of community I believe in now. Not a list of contacts. Not vague "exposure." Real intellectual friction. Different priors in the same room. Better questions because not everyone is solving the problem from the same angle.

This has also made me more aware of one of my own constraints. I am still fairly introverted in new environments. I do not naturally walk into a room and start ten conversations. Once I know people, I engage deeply. But the first step does not come easily to me.

At Booth, that matters. Not because there is some social ideal I feel pressure to perform, but because there is actual value I miss when I stay too much in my own lane. I am learning that participation here is not only about raising your hand in class or doing the reading. It is also about making yourself available to the environment.

I have not mastered that yet, but I am more aware of the cost of not trying.

5. Booth is making me less tolerant of strategy that cannot survive contact with reality

This may be the most important change of all.

Before business school, I thought graduate management education would mostly make me better at talking about strategy. Booth has done almost the opposite. It has made me more impatient with strategy that stays abstract.

Across courses, team projects, competitions, interviews, and side building, the same pattern keeps showing up: frameworks are useful only if they hold up when a real decision has to be made by a real person under real constraints.

That sounds simple, but it has changed how I listen, how I evaluate ideas, and how I talk about my own work. I am less impressed now by language that feels polished but does not translate into a concrete choice. I care more about whether a line of thinking can survive contact with actual incentives, actual tradeoffs, and actual execution.

In that sense, Booth has been less about giving me a new vocabulary and more about raising the cost of pretending that vocabulary is enough.

That has been good for me.

What feels different now

Six months in, I do not feel transformed in some dramatic way. I feel more honest.

More aware of where I confuse confidence with readiness. More aware of when I am spreading effort instead of focusing it. More aware that the environment gives back more when I meet it fully. More aware that the quality of my thinking depends not only on what I know, but on how rigorously I prepare, choose, and participate.

That, for me, is the real value of the first six months.

Not that Booth has made me feel smarter.

It has made me less casual about the difference between potential and execution.

And that is a much more useful change.