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[MUSIC]
When I was 14, my family and I moved
over 5,000 miles from Milan to Seoul.
My last night in Italy,
I remember feeling devastated because
the world as I knew it had
been taken away from me.
My international school in Milan
was a diverse environment that
fostered individuality.
I took French and journalism as electives.
I played soccer after school.
I went canoeing in France as
a part of a school field trip.
But in my all female school in Korea, I
was stuck in school from 7:30 AM to 10 PM.
Everyone took the exact same courses, and
there was no such thing as electives.
I went from being the math and
science wiz in Italy to flunking my
very first science assignment in Korea.
We had to write the 118 elements of
the periodic table, 60 times each.
Now, that's over 7,000 times.
The next day,
I proudly presented my homework,
the teacher glanced at it and
wrote a big x.
Apparently, it had to be written
horizontally and not vertically, which
meant that I flunked the assignment and
had to do it all over again, the next day.
You see, it was quite a rough transition.
But by the end of high school, I felt like
I had fully adjusted to life in Korea.
I'd made a few good friends and
pulled many,
many all nighters to
catch up to schoolwork.
And I remember thinking [SOUND], the
toughest days of my life are finally over.
But to my surprise,
there were significant and
challenging life transitions over,
over, and over again,
including coping with a big heartbreak,
moving to Japan, and
then to Hong Kong, starting work,
and coming here to the GSB.
And I recognize there was a pattern.
When I first step into seasons of change,
I often felt like I'd lost control,
like I had lost a part of myself.
And I confess this is how I felt many
times during my first year of the GSB.
As I started what was supposed to
be the two best years of my life,
I wondered why I didn't feel as confident
and as happy as many of you seem to be.
Can anyone relate to that?
[LAUGH] So
I asked 107 MBA 2s of the Class of 2016,
what were your most dominate feelings
as you spent your first year?
The results were eye-opening.
Almost 60% of you said that you were
primarily anxious in your first year.
45% said that you were excited,
which is great.
43% said that you felt
like you had lost control,
and 38% said that you felt lonely, and
only 7% felt like you were confident.
Now, the feelings of anxiety or
the lack of control seemed like a common
experience as we go
through seasons of change.
And I've realized we have full agency
to shape and manage this transition
instead of reluctantly or
reactively struggling through them.
So today, I want to share
with you the art of managing
life transitions, and
I've packaged them in three Rs,
recalibrate, reframe, and reach out.
Now, the first R is
recalibrate your expectations.
I lived and worked in nine
different countries in my life, so
I thought coming here to the United States
as a student would be a piece of cake.
I expected to hit the ground
running on day one.
But as my feelings deviated
from my expectations of how
quickly I could adjust,
I felt increasingly nervous.
And perhaps this is why the survey
shows that the students
who have lived in the United States for
a long period were
proportionally more anxious than the
students who came here for the first time.
Whereas international students expected
coming to the GSB to be a big life
transition and
expected to feel frustrated even.
Many of the American students didn't
think that this would be a big change.
But the fact that it was,
made many of us feel nervous.
I realized last year that I
was penalizing myself for
falling short of an unrealistic
expectation I was putting on myself.
Once I started recalibrating
these expectations,
I created more room for self-mercy.
And with that came a newfound
sense of relief and
calmness that helped me push
through this time of transition.
So if you're going through a transition,
or the next time you go through one,
think hard about the types of expectations
you're putting on yourself and
recalibrate them, and always remember
to have more self-mercy and not less.
The second R is reframe challenging times
and transitions as an opportunity to grow.
When I first started work
in consulting in Korea,
my manager had given me
some rough feedback.
My confidence had hit rock bottom, and
I did what most first year analysts
did at that time,
which was go to the bathroom and cry.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And my senior analyst,
Meredith, came to find me in the restroom,
and there I was crying, and
she said something that
I will never forget.
She said, Christine,
things are hard because you're growing.
Yes, it's uncomfortable,
and yes, it's painful but
only because you're taking
on bigger things in life.
Stanford psychologist,
Carol Dweck, calls this the growth
mindset and found that this is exactly
what allows people to thrive even during
the most difficult life situations.
So if you are going through
a season of change and
if you have all of these
negative feelings hitting you,
remember that you have the agency
to reframe your mindset.
Because when you do and
if you do, you will come out
of life transitions stronger.
I've experienced this many times in my
life, and our classmates have done, too.
The single biggest shift in
emotions from the first year and
the second year, was confidence.
Whereas only 7% of our classmates
felt confident in the first year,
50% said that they felt
confident their second year, and
this was the second most
dominant feeling after gratitude.
So always remember to reframe your
mindset, and it's in your agency to do so.
The third R is reach out.
What amplified my feelings of anxiety and
loss of control was the perception that
I was the only one feeling this way.
And I didn't want to share this with
a lot of you, because I'm usually a happy
person, and I didn't want to
be perceived in any other way.
A breakthrough moment for me came when I
was talking to a close group of friends,
and I confided my true feelings with them.
And to my surprise,
even the most confident-looking
one was struggling inside.
The realization that I am not alone,
gave me so much relief.
And this sense of togetherness
helped me heal out of my anxieties.
So if you're like me,
reach out to someone.
It's okay to be vulnerable.
And on the flip side,
if you know someone who's going through
a significant change, reach out to them,
because you never know how much of
an impact you can have in their lives.
So here are the three Rs of managing
life transitions, recalibrate,
reframe, and reach out.
Whether you have another
year of school left, or
you're going out into the real world,
take this toolkit with you.
And always remember that you have full
agency to shape, manage the many,
many life transitions that
are coming your way, thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]
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