Shortly after her MBA experience pivoted to a virtual MBA experience, Marilyn Caton (Kellogg, ‘21) realized that this was an opportunity to reimagine ways to connect with her classmates. With the help of Slack, Caton and her classmates started (#diy_kellogg), a channel to facilitate ideas around connection and remote team building. During our interview, Caton shared how she and her classmates started this, and some of the ways in which she stayed connected with her classmates virtually during the spring quarter.
MBASchooled: Back in March, you started DIY Kellogg. How did you come up with the idea, and how has it evolved since then?
When Kellogg announced it was going virtual due to the pandemic, the student body was (rightfully so) concerned about the value of their MBA experience. I trusted our faculty to build a stellar academic experience, the career center to do everything in their power to keep our internships safe, and our student community to check in on our friends and make sure they were getting the support they needed. From my perspective, the clear gap was in losing a quarter (or more) of networking, so I decided to do something about it.
DIY Kellogg started out as a few game nights, a gratitude workshop, and a speaker series to provide social events for the community, but our mission has since evolved into focusing on helping students build relationships virtually across the more traditionally separate full-time, part-time, and EMBA programs. This spring, we organized random coffee chats, 10 weeks’ worth of Networking Pods, a weeklong virtual mafia marathon game, group fitness classes, MBA Battle Royale, and more!
MBASchooled: What’s been the adjustment like for you and your classmates to go from seeing each other frequently to seeing each other rarely?
On the one hand, it’s easier to catch up with people when all you have to do is sit down at your computer – no one knows if you’re wearing pants or not! On the other, it’s easier to get distracted while having a conversation, to not feel connected while chatting on screen, to let school-work-life boundaries blend even further, and to forget to check in at all. It’s definitely harder to stay up to date on everyone’s lives when we can’t just have a quick chat in a hallway.
My favorite haunt in Fall and Winter quarter was sitting on the Spanish Steps whenever I had some free time. People would stop by for a minute or join to (pretend to) get work done, and it was a great way to pass an afternoon before class. Thanks to my efforts with DIY Kellogg, I was invited to join a Virtual Co-Curricular Task Force led by the Student Experience team in Spring, and one of the things we talked about was the difficulty of digitally replicating that casual hangout spot in the Plaza. Unfortunately, we never arrived at a satisfying conclusion to that problem.
MBASchooled: What’s difficult about trying to build relationships in a virtual setting?
I think we’re all starting from a pretty low energy state to begin with – everyone is burnt out on screen time. Add to that the slight delay between feeds so you never know if you’re going to interrupt someone or have an awkward pause in the conversation, technical difficulties with audio or video freezing and lagging, and multiple time zone juggling, and you’re facing some pretty high barriers to building real relationships virtually.
MBASchooled: What were some of the most memorable events or ways you saw students engaging and building relationships virtually?
My favorite event this spring was our virtual mafia game, for which I was narrator/admin. We had 27 students across our full-time and evening/weekend programs commit to playing the party game mafia in “real-time” – that is, every morning they discovered who was killed overnight, and had all day to debate who to kill. Our comment threads would be hundreds of messages long every day! My favorite part was the creativity everyone brought to the table. From coding misleading “random” name generators to photoshopping chat messages, I guarantee you’ve never played mafia with house rules quite like DIY Kellogg before!
MBASchooled: As you think about heading into your second year and knowing that the MBA environment is somewhat uncertain, how are you thinking about how you will continue to build relationships with your classmates?
DIY Kellogg’s found a lot of success in connecting students virtually, so I don’t want to let go of that. Obviously I’m just as eager as everyone else to get back in person, but a number of my classmates are stuck abroad, quarantining at home, or are otherwise unable to return to campus for other reasons, and I don’t want to count them out!
MBASchooled: In general, starting off in a new environment means that it takes time to build relationships. How would you advise incoming first years to navigate this, knowing that their first few months might have a virtual component?
As someone who’s coming off Week 5 of a virtually onboarded internship, let me first say: I hear you. It’s not fun always trying to find time on people’s calendars and trying to convey your personality or build a connection via a screen. All I can say is to keep trying, and know that you’re doing your best. Some calls are going to feel a lot more successful than others. It’s kind of like going to the gym – sometimes it doesn’t feel like anything is happening, but if you’re persistent, keep showing up, and put forth whatever your best effort that day looks like, something good is bound to happen.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students around the best ways to build meaningful relationships with classmates in a virtual MBA environment?
What I’ve found works for me is to have a reason to get together, not just a virtual happy hour where we’re sitting with water glasses, watching two or three people carry the conversation because us all jumping in at once would be chaos. With a group game commitment or even a project group that meets regularly, you start to get to know people a little better without having to think about the content of the conversation quite as much. Technical difficulties happen, but if it’s an important call, I’ll disconnect as many devices from my wifi as possible. Finally, I make (what feels like) artificially large gestures above shoulder height so it’s on screen, silently nod while people are talking, and slightly exaggerate facial expressions in response to what they say – anything to make it easier on the other person to feel engaged in the conversation.
Want to learn how to prepare for your MBA Experience? Make sure to sign up for our July 19th webinar to learn how you can prepare for business school