The Academic Doldrums

Most consulting firms have a bad habit of recruiting graduates almost a year before they actually start work. This period has been ingeniously coined ‘the milk round’. Why is this bad? Well mainly because those who have job offers don’t really know what to do with the rest of their time in college. And those who don’t, are usually so worried about landing a job that they don’t concentrate in class anyway. In my opinion, it is the most useless period in one’s academic life. Furthermore, in consulting, you largely ignore whatever you learnt in college, so why on earth waste another eight months filling your tiny cranium with more garbage? Instead, if you really wanted to spend your last few days of freedom studying – you’d be far better off reading something useful like Powerpoint or Excel for Dummies. Or, if you are like me, you would just take the time off and go travelling to exotic lands.

But, that was not to be. Like everyone else, I stuck around for the next few months to get my seal of approval. In hindsight, it does teach you a very important skill – the ability to work hard on extremely pointless ventures. Another core consulting skill. So the next time you spend 80 hours a week, six weeks in a row coming up with recommendations for your client and your recommendation gets dumped, you won’t really feel so bad. After all you were taught all about it in college.