A gruelling stay at a school for US marines made us think differently about decision-making, writes GARETH KEANE

GIVEN THAT we are almost at the end of our first year at Wharton, this last month has been busier than I expected.

At the same time, though, there have been opportunities to take advantage of some of the school’s extracurricular activities.

At the start of April, I had my first experience with Wharton’s Leadership Ventures programme on a trip that brought about 90 of my classmates to the US Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia.

We arrived about 9pm on a Thursday and, after a brief introduction from the commander of the school, were split into groups and handed over to drill instructors for the night.

What followed was one of the most bizarre experiences I have ever had. We were shouted at until the small hours of the morning and given a brief taste of what officer candidates experience during their first few days at the school.

I felt like an extra in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket as we were marched through darkness to the barracks where we were staying and introduced to some standard marine-corps activities, which seemed mostly to involve milling about in the midst of general chaos.

No matter how hard we tried, nothing we did was good enough for the drill instructors who had been assigned to our group. As a result, they kept us sweating until 2am and then ensured sleep was impossible by stomping in at random points during the night until our ordeal started again at 5am.

The next morning began with more inept marching in the dark before we tried to eat breakfast as quickly as possible without annoying the various gunnery sergeants and staff sergeants who were watching over us like hawks.

I was unlucky enough to be one of the 10 poor unfortunates assigned to serve breakfast to my classmates, which meant I had about five minutes to gobble down my own food once everyone else had been served.

After this, we were finally given a reprieve from the endless shouting.

The morning continued with a few hours of discussion with marine-corps officers about their approach to teaching and developing leadership, after which three classmates and I were assigned to an officer who was our guide for the rest of the day.

We were brought to the leadership reaction course, which consisted of tactical situations that were presented to us to solve.

Each member of our four- person team had the chance to be team leader in one of these scenarios, receiving a solo briefing from our host and then being evaluated on how they communicated instructions to the rest of the team, on the decisions they made, and on the outcomes achieved by the team.

After lunch, at which we were introduced to the delights of military rations, my four-person team spent the afternoon tackling the school’s combat course, an obstacle course through the woods that had us scrambling on our backs through concrete pipes submerged in mud and water, among other challenges.

The lack of sleep the night before made this an interesting experience, and our team needed to support each other through the various sections.

All through the day we were able to discuss with our escort how the marines make decisions, and contrast this with our own experiences and perspectives.

It was interesting to see how every challenge the school throws at candidates is designed to get them used to making decisions in the midst of chaos with less than perfect data – something the typical overly analytical MBA can find difficult.

There was leadership of a different kind on display last weekend at the MBA rugby world championships, hosted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

More than 20 teams from around the world showed up to compete for the title, which was won yet again by Ireland’s Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.

They beat Wharton on their way to the title, but our team had no complaints – we played as well as we could and were beaten by a good team.

And of course there is always next year...