I Had MBA Envy for Years. Then I Just Did It.

It's 11 p.m. My son is asleep. I'm at my kitchen table, staring at a statistics problem I haven't touched since high school, and I'm laughing.

Not out of stress. Out of genuine delight.

That moment surprised me more than anything else about the UC Davis Online MBA program. I was a marketing and communications executive with over a decade of experience. I thought I knew what I was good at—and more importantly, what I wasn't. Numbers, I assumed, were not really my thing.

Turns out I was wrong.

What Nobody Tells You About Going Back to School as an Adult

The thing no one tells you about going back to school as an adult is that the identity shift isn't dramatic. I didn't quit my job. I didn't reinvent myself. I was working full-time in venture capital, working with portfolio companies across B2B and B2C by day, and carving out 8 p.m. to midnight every night—plus most weekends—to study. There was no social life. My family joked that "Katja's going into her office and she's not coming back anytime soon."

I expected to feel stretched thin. I didn't expect to feel alive.

I didn't change who I was. I just discovered skills that were dormant.

The study group was part of it. We were all working professionals—parents, managers, people with real stakes. My group mate was in accounts receivable and built spreadsheets that made our jaws drop. I ended up falling in love with statistics and figuring out how to make data tell a story. Neither of us knew those would be our superpowers until we were up at 2 a.m., figuring it out together.

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When the MBA Value Finally Clicked

The value didn't hit me at graduation. It hit me a year or two later, sitting at my desk at Bloom Energy, realizing I can help write the 10-K—the annual financial report every public company files—and understand what it means for our business and audiences.

I could understand a P&L before. But really connecting the dots is what the MBA enabled.

The clearest example of what the program gave me, though, was a group project on the WeWork collapse. We could have done a PowerPoint. Instead, we built a full TV news segment—a news anchor, an "expert interview" (with me!), and a live recreation of an Adam Neumann party in someone's living room, complete with disco balls, palm trees, and a classmate DJ-ing. We wove every leadership and organizational behavior concept from the course into the broadcast. Our professor said it was one of the top five presentations he'd seen in his career.

We still get recognized for it at reunions.

That kind of creative confidence—the willingness to do the unexpected—is something I carried back into my day job. As Head of Corporate Communications at Bloom Energy, I think differently about every campaign, every document, every meeting. Not just "what's the message" but "what does this actually mean for the business?"

Honest Advice for Prospective Students

Who would thrive at UC Davis: If you're someone who already has real-world experience and wants the analytical and financial fluency to match it, this program delivers. The cohort you'll study with is made up of your peers, not competitors—people who show up to a 1 a.m. Zoom session and still find the energy to laugh. That matters more than I expected.

Who might struggle: If you're not willing to protect your time ruthlessly, or if you need the validation of a credential immediately, be honest with yourself. The ROI here is slow-release. I didn't fully appreciate what I'd learned until I had to use it under pressure.

One last thing: Don't judge courses by their titles. Some of the ones I almost skipped turned out to be the most valuable. Do the research—find out who's teaching and what they actually cover. You might be surprised.

I spent years saying I wanted an MBA—what I called my "MBA envy." I'm glad I finally stopped talking about it. The world belongs to those who try.

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