Life moves on... quarter to quarter

Ever since I started on my FEMBA (Fully Employed MBA, the politically correct expression for part-time MBA) program at UCLA Anderson, life seems to move ahead in chunks of time. In quarters to be precise. A quarter lasts exactly 10 weeks. And there is a certain predictability to your mental state over those 10 weeks. Week 1 begins with some level of euphoria and positive energy, that seems to ebb and settle by weeks 2 and 3. By week 4, multi-tasking (more on that and time management later) reaches a nadir, week 5 is desperate and involves at least one all-nighter, week 6 and 7 are spent recovering from exhaustion and catching up with everything else that was put on hold, week 8 starts with a mix of fatigue and disciplined effort to move on, week 9 is a blur, multiple allnighters in week 10 that ends with a sense of relief mixed with foreboding for the quarter to begin. One chapter closes and the next opens. The cycle continues.

Thankfully, FEMBA students don't care as much about grades as the fulltimers do. Probably because the fulltimers take a bigger risk when they leave a job to go fulltime, and they like to ensure that they have the one thing that they have control over to be in their grasp - grades. But then every professor I've seen so far has insisted that grades don't matter in any MBA program, every alumnus I've talked to so far has insisted that the curriculum or the academic side doesn't matter as much as the people you meet and the friends you make. The only question that crops up in my mind - then why does the program have to cost so much?