A Day in The Life of a First-Year MBA Co-op Student

By: David Grier
MBA Co-op Program

Entering the MBA Co-op Program has been an exciting time for me!  Hofstra is built around the idea of connecting with other students and forming lasting relationships, and this program has helped me stay focused, motivated, and feel connected as we grow and learn together. I believe that one of the key components to success in Hofstra's MBA program is that the co-op students are able to build strong relationships through group projects and the large amount of time we spend together in class.  Here is what a typical day for me has looked like so far:

7:20 am: My alarm goes off for the fifth time this morning. I (regretfully) press stop, roll out of bed, and get into the shower.

7:45 am: I start my car and mentally prepare myself to deal with the traffic I’m sure to encounter on my way to school.  The commute to and from campus has an enormous impact on my life as a graduate student, and has certainly changed the way in which I interact with my fellow co-op students. It’s difficult to do things as a group when you live relatively far apart, so GroupMe has become a key forum for interaction. There’s always someone active in the group chat, and it’s great to be able to jump in at a random point in a day-long conversation between your fellow cohort students at any time. I see it as a good sign that working in a collaborative environment has come easily to the MBA co-op group, as we’ll be spending a lot of time together in the future.  

9:20 am: I reach Hofstra University and exchange greetings with another MBA co-op student who arrived at the same time. We walk to C.V. Starr to meet up with some other MBA co-op students at the tables on the second floor, then start our first and only class of the day.

9:35 am: My fellow co-op students and I sit in Barry Berman's Marketing 203 class, discussing real-life examples of complex marketing ideas. Since Marketing isn't my concentration, this has been my first chance to learn about marketing strategies in any sort of detail. A big part of this class, like most of my other classes, is the group project.  The time our co-op group has spent together so far has helped form the relationships necessary to facilitate group work. This has helped things run smoothly as we progress through each project.

12:30 pm: I walk into the Graduate Business Career Services office, where I work as a Graduate Assistant. A few minutes into the workday a member of my MBA co-op group comes in for an appointment, and we talk about a group project we’re on together while they wait. It’s great to see members of the MBA co-op group start to trickle into the office as the big networking events of Fall semester loom on the horizon. I make a mental note to begin the networking process myself, adding this item to my ever-growing to-do list. I’ve finally begun to realize that time management is no longer a vague concept preached by parents and teachers. I’m busier than I’ve ever been, and I’m really enjoying it. There’s been a lot of anticipation concerning summer internships in the MBA co-op group lately, as many of us want to work in companies or industries that primarily recruit in the Fall. A mix of trepidation and excitement surrounds the recruitment process for the most prestigious and highly competitive internships, which can be equally grueling and rewarding. Many of us will know where we will be spending our summers by the end of our first semester at Hofstra, and the building pressure to find an internship is starting to make its presence felt. This shared pressure, as well as our increasing workload and the growing threat of midterms, has only served to bring many of us closer together.

4:40 pm: As I sit in traffic on my way home, I realize that my favorite moments of the day are the few brief interactions with my fellow co-op students before class and at work that seem to make time go by just a little more quickly. By picking up on passing comments and obscure references made during these short conversations, you can often learn a lot about how a person thinks and reacts to different situations. I find these little tidbits of personality fascinating, as they begin to fit together like a puzzle the more you spend time with a person you’ve just met. 

Though sometimes limited to only a small exchange of comments, these conversations have helped me form connections very quickly. I think these connections are crucial to my success here at Hofstra, the cohesive functionality of the cohort, and ultimately to our educational experience as a whole.