Double life of a MBA student and owner of a PR agency
By Nguyen Thi Ha Minh
NUS MBA 2nd year student

I wish I could say that having real life experiences in the working world and owning my own business would make my MBA studies a breeze. However, I was terribly mistaken. From the get-go of my studies at NUS Business School in their Masters in Business Administration (MBA) programme, I realised it takes much more.

The past year at NUS has been an eventful yet memorable one, juggling between running a business out of Vietnam and doing my MBA in Singapore. I own a Public Relations boutique agency in Vietnam, Sky Aries, and have a dedicated team that I’m indebted to.

At Sky Aries, I am primarily involved in business development and client servicing. Although I do not do the actual day-to-day work (thanks to my Sky Aries team), I try to involve myself as much as I can in important pitches or campaigns, and maintain existing relationships with key media. The reason why I came to NUS Business School to further my studies was not only because of its established programme, but to be closer to my clients based in Singapore, and being able to meet them face to face instead of via conference calls. Meeting and talking to someone in person is something that cannot be replaced.

The road to achieving my MBA is anything but easy. The programme has been intensive and competitive. Most of my friends and classmates are full-time students, who are able to dedicate their time to the programme. The competitive nature as put by one of my fellow classmates “The MBA office did a great job in recruiting all the high achievers, put them into one batch and let them compete with each other.”

We are competing amongst ourselves, and like every student here at NUS Business School, we don’t want to just achieve good grades, we are fighting against the academic bell curve. I remember the Financial Accounting mid-term, where we received our results, thinking we all did fine, only to find out that the mean score was 26/30. This means scoring 25 marks, or 83%, would be below average. This eye-opener made everyone work even harder for perfection. It was apparent in the next Microeconomics mid-term where a quarter of the class scored full marks.

I remember in the first semester, we had two mid-term exams scheduled on a Saturday and the following Monday. In that same week, I had to travel to Vietnam for a press conference from Wednesday to Friday, leaving me only hours in between touching down in Singapore to my mid-term on Saturday. During that period, I could only afford four hours of sleep a day.

Thankfully, I must say, I received great support from everyone at NUS, including my professor who was kind enough to email me the mock quiz early in the morning, and a fellow classmate helped to “live” feed the lecture via video conferencing so that I could attend the revision lecture via Skype. The marvels of modern day technology! Of course, I always had my notes with me, so I could squeeze in any free time I had to revise, be it before a spokesperson’s briefing session, or waiting for media guests to arrive, or even in the cab, where ever, and whenever, you name it! Candidly, I find myself becoming very creative in fully utilizing these little in-between times to study and revise.

Nowadays, I usually find myself multi-tasking, studying during business trips, on flights to and from Vietnam, so going back to work during the school holidays are now considered mini-vacations for me. Although I usually fly back once a month, there are times where I have to make trips back on a fortnightly basis.

My journey thus far has enriched my thinking and deepened my level of understanding of the business world. I am amazed at the many different things I can relate to, and it’s not just confined to marketing-related courses, but also accounting, management, finance and corporate strategy. When you get to immerse in an academic environment on a daily basis, you start to be able to look at things from a very different perspective, which then can be applied back to the workplace. Back at the agency, as we are a small outfit, we’re able to implement new initiatives very quickly, further aiding in its growth and development.

Looking from another angle, I know I’m one of the very few lucky people who are able to work and study at the same time. I’ve been trying very hard to make this work, even if it means waking up early, staying up late, or studying for exams on the plane. I am grateful for my terrific and supportive team in Vietnam as well as many of my clients who have shown understanding and support. My only challenge now lies in living up to this by finding the optimum balance between work and study.