I’ve found myself thinking those three words on a regular basis in the months since I picked up the phone and found out I was accepted into the UCLA Anderson Class of 2017.
In fact, I’m thinking them right now because I’m writing this post while nestled on a couch inside the home of my favorite musician of all time. More on that later.
But first, a little about myself. My name is Matthew Becker, and I am happy to be contributing to a website I was glued to as a hopeful applicant. I grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and for the last three years I was living in Washington, D.C. working as a communications director on Capitol Hill. I decided to get my MBA because I wanted to make a career change to management consulting, and a city change to Los Angeles (growing up in North Dakota gave me enough cold weather to last a lifetime).
Back to that acceptance phone call I was talking about. It was a total blur. The student on the other end of the line said the words “hello”, “welcome”, “you”, “congratulations”, and “2017”. They were certainly constructed in the form of a sentence, but I was too excited to hear them in the correct order.
After processing that information, I decided to squeeze as many adventures (and business books) as I possibly could into my pre-MBA summer.
Two months of nonstop travel
After moving out of D.C. at the beginning of April, first up was a trip to Las Vegas with my close friends, which led right into A-Days. After an amazing weekend on campus filled with enticing bits of what's to come this fall, I flew to London to do something I never imagined I'd be able to do in my lifetime: go on tour with my favorite musician.
Concert photography has been my side passion for the last six years, and through a combination of luck and networking (MBA tip: get ready to hear that word a lot) I ended up as Bryan Ferry's tour photographer for 16 shows throughout the U.K. For an entire month, I had to pinch myself - a lot.
Me and Bryan Ferry
The tour ended at the beginning of June, and I was set to fly back when he asked me to stay at his countryside estate outside of London for another month and edit his career retrospective photo book. You can imagine those three words from this post's title were coming up frequently at this point.
Multitasking in Sussex
In between photo sorting sessions, the quiet countryside has proven to be a highly productive place for getting the all-important summer reading done. I started with general business and lifestyle books like Capital in the 21st Century and The Power of Habit, and as school gets closer I'm moving into more specific reading like Case Studies and Cocktails and Case in Point.
So it turns out this is reality. And next week it's back to the U.S. to see friends and family before hitting the gas pedal for L.A.!
- Matthew Becker, MBA '17 // Instagram: Matthew.Becker
