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This is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck.

During this spring’s reunions, the Skydeck crew set up shop on Spangler lawn and asked returning alumni to reflect on their time at HBS—and to offer current students some advice based on their experience.

And in this episode of Skydeck, we share some of our favorite responses.

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Joelle Grapfer-Kaufman (MBA 1996): Joelle Grapfer-Kaufman, class of 1996, section B.

Try everything. Open your aperture. Open your aperture to people, open your aperture to courses, open your aperture to experiences. Try everything. Life isn’t a straight path, and when you have the opportunity to be at HBS, where there are so many possibilities available, treat it like the buffet that it is and go back to the table and try something. And if you don’t like something, fine. Try something else. But really open your eyes.

Xavier Paternot (MBA 2002): Xavier Paternot, 2002.

Make career decisions based on your, on your guts and your, and your heart, and not on- on your head.

Hang Li (MBA 2006): Hang Li, MBA, 2016. So, the community aspect is really important. The most important people in my life right now are actually my classmates. However, I think one thing I kind of reflected on was that the relationships, the community, the network matters only after your own abilities and willingness to put in the work.

The grit of doing the day-to-day of a company-- and these are not glamorous things a lot of times. Like they’re just , you know, picking up phone calls. Calling brokers and doing work, reading over agreements. But those are actually where you spend a majority of your time, and just having the drive to carry that through.

I think that’s even more important. You know, the community will help you in the very beginning, right, but you gotta carry through and deliver, and then the community will support you from that. But if you’re not willing to put in the work and kind of just drive through, it’s less important that you have a network or a community that supports you.

Charanya Kannan (MBA 2017): I would say work on self-awareness. HBS was a great place for me to be vulnerable and learn from everyone around me in terms of who I really am. So just the change of context. My pre-HBS life and my post-HBS life was a huge cultural shift. I was working in India and South Korea before HBS, and then I moved to the US for HBS. So, a lot of the two years at HBS was spent, of course learning about, you know, business and the world around you, but a huge part of the transformation was internal, where I understood who I really was, what my place in the society is, and how I can bring my authentic self to the world, how I don’t have to be anyone else, how I don’t have to try to fit in, and so that would be my advice.

Like, look inwards, be yourself, bring your authentic self, don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. And anytime you have FOMO and you’re thinking of the 50 people who are having fun, look around, you’ll always find 10 people who you will be able to relate to, who can connect to the things you can. So, always look out for those people. That’s my biggest advice.

Carmen LI (MBA 2016): Carmen Li, 16, section J. I feel like the more you give, the more you will actually take out. So, give as much as you can. I don’t mean to overstretch yourself, but if you have the capacity, you know, go join a club, go host a conversation, go on a trip together, right. Really the more you give, the more you get back.

Ying Zhao (MBA 2002): Christine Zhao, or Ying Zhao. I’d say really enjoy your time here. Really focus on learning the methodology, not so much the current contents of the learning, although that’s important as well, but as we know, life is always changing. Where we are, this age, the only constant is change. And so it’s really the tools that we will get, is the most important. And then obviously, above all, build that lifelong relationship with fellow students, classmates, alumni, faculty, and you know, just maintain that network of community. That’s, I think, the biggest value of the HBS education.

Christopher Williams (MBA 2002): Christopher Williams. One (piece of) advice I’ll give to current HBS students is to have courage. We’re living in a very complex world. Dynamics are shifting. Time is exponential and moments matter. And what I’ve found in my experience in my career—and it took me a long time to get there, to the point where I’m comfortable, and I’m still growing—is to have courage to seize the moment, to have courage to own a point of view, to have courage to express it, to have courage to fight for it, and to have courage to act. In my experience, that has separated people who have impact and people who don’t have impact. And that’s what I would ask every HBS, alum or student to develop, the ability to be your courageous self all the time.

Maimouna Diakhaby (MBA 2016): Maimouna Diakhaby, HBS 2016. I would say be bold and try different things. This is an incredible institution, you know, people and multiple resources. Leverage them and be bold and have fun. That’s what I would say.

Jeremy Watson (MBA 2016): Jeremy Watson. Reach out to your professors now. Get their phone numbers and emails and bug them. That would be one [laughs].

Speaker 2: Has that worked out for you?

Watson: It has.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Watson: Yeah, yeah. Professor John Macomber, hey professor. He’s been, he’s been he’s been great. I email him whenever I have questions and he’s wonderful.

Kikka Hanazawa (MBA 2002): Kikka Hanazawa. I think be open-minded, you know. Really take the path that maybe nobody takes. Because you know, you’re in a moment where like, okay, everybody is pursuing a certain career, where they’re, in our time, it was maybe investment banking and consulting. Today, I don’t know. But there are trends and if you pursue what everybody else does, sometimes it’s very competitive. But I took a very different career path, and it turned out to be the best thing I’ve probably, I did, yeah. I mean, of course there are not many people I can ask for advice. I needed to pave my own path, but it worked out really well, actually.

Lester Bradshaw (MBA 1980): Lester Bradshaw, or Les Bradshaw when I was here. Count yourself as probably one of the luckiest people on this planet. If you got in here, number one, assume that you deserve to be here. Number two, expect to work your ass off. And number three, you get through it, nobody could ever take that away from you. This is the place—this is where you stop being worried about the manual and start figuring out what the problem is. And all I could tell them is, revel in it every day. I mean, throw yourself at it with everything you’ve got, every day.

And I just heard a talk today about being thankful about things. And that’s probably the one thing you have to do, is no matter how hard it gets, no matter how bad you think you’re doing, be thankful that you were here, because you are one of the truly lucky people on this planet.

Nobuko Kobayashi (MBA 2002): I would say do not be afraid to go out of the comfort zone. Do not hang out with the people that look like you and from the same culture. Just mingle and go out of your territory.

Philia Hiotis (MBA 2002): Philia Hiotis. I would say, you know, try to make a career out of something you’re passionate for. So, in a way, I would say success is, you know, finding something where you’re getting paid for something that you love to do.

Pierre Lorenceau (MBA 2001): Pierre Lorenceau. I think a lot of HBS current students might think they’re not ready for entrepreneurship and they are. Uh, They carry more know-how and more abilities than they might think, and they may go for the safety of a big company. But I think most HBSers are ready for entrepreneurship one way or the other. And so I would say, swing for the fence.

Michael Segal (MBA 2015): Michael Segal.My advice is based on my own experience, where at least for the first year, my head was in a bunch of places. Coming out of start-up failure, ego stuff, and I honestly, if I could go in a time machine, the one thing I would tell that person is just savor and enjoy it. When is the next time you’re going to be in your 20s or early 30s around a bunch of really smart, passionate people who all have the same positive mindset and want to be friends and want to be open and can teach you things and can learn from you? It’s just not going to happen again. And so there’s always a million reasons to be grumpy or skeptical or distracted at every stage in your life, and I think this is advice I’d give anybody at any point, but especially me as a first year or second year at HBS.

Just enjoy and love it for what it is because it’s going to go by like that, and there’s just so much to get out of it while you’re here.

Skydeck is produced by the External Relations department at Harvard Business School and edited by Craig McDonald. It is available at iTunes and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. For more information or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.

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