MBA Reflection

My MBA journey started with a spreadsheet, but the endpoint was beyond what any organised plan could predict.

A mentor told me to start with the end in mind. So I mapped it. The goal, the timing, the right program. Deakin won. The plan was clean. What it couldn’t account for was me.

My first big exercise was 360-degree feedback from my colleagues, peers, managers and direct reports, they had rated me higher than I had rated myself. In multiple areas. Consistently.

The people who worked alongside me every day saw something I had stopped seeing in myself.

That stayed with me through every unit.

Reading the handbook, I dreaded the group assignments. It seemed every other unit had one. I had done group work before. I knew how it went. Someone disappears. Someone coasts. You carry more than your share and hand in something good enough.

Not in the MBA.

These were professionals who had chosen to be there, at real cost, with real skin in the game. When everyone is genuinely invested, the work changes. The conversations go deeper. The hours do not feel like a sacrifice.

Every minute is an investment.

Being surrounded by people who chose the same thing you did, who show up fully, creates the same conditions as that 360 feedback. People who are truly paying attention see you more clearly than sometimes you see yourself.

The MBA gave me a new way of thinking.

More importantly, it challenged how I thought about myself.

What has someone seen in you that you hadn’t yet seen in yourself?

If you’re interested in my MBA story, the Deakin Business Newsroom article:

https://businessnewsroom.deakin.edu.au/news/2025/10/learning-with-intention-in-the-deakin-mba/