There are moments while studying for these midterms when my mind wanders unexpectedly.
Not to college.
Not to my first job.
But all the way back to tenth and twelfth grade exam season.
I can still remember coming home after an exam sometime around noon, dropping my bag near the door, and immediately smelling lunch being cooked in the kitchen.
Amma was always making something wonderful.
The television would be on in the living room, Appa cheering for the Indian cricket team as though his support alone might carry them through the match.
My little brother would drift in and out of the house carrying his tiny cricket bat, disappearing to play with friends and returning briefly for water or snacks before running back outside again.
The house was alive around me.
And somehow, in the middle of all that noise and movement and ordinary life, I studied.
Back then, my biggest responsibility was simple.
Learn the material.
Write the exam.
Be a good student.
Those feel, in memory at least, like golden days.
Sometimes I miss the simplicity of that version of life.
Today I find myself preparing for another midterm.
Only now I am forty.
And I have two children of my own.
This afternoon I sat at our kitchen island working through microeconomics problem sets while lunch slowly came together around me.
The infamous sheet pan kebab.
I moved between economics problems and trays of cauliflower and bell peppers headed for the oven, pausing occasionally to stir, season, or check the timer.
My husband stepped in to help with some of the chopping and sautéing while I returned to elasticity calculations and the latest puzzle Professor Kent Smetters had set before us.
By the time the numbers finally started making sense, the kitchen smelled of kebabs, roasted vegetables, and lunch.
The kids were nearby playing elaborate helicopter rescue missions with Legos.
My husband and brother were watching the World Cup and debating game statistics with the seriousness usually reserved for national policy decisions.
And there I was, pencil in hand, trying to make sense of economics graphs and numbers.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I realized something that made me smile.
Years ago, I came home from exams to the smell of my mother's cooking while I studied.
Today, I am the one making lunch while studying for an exam of my own.
For a moment, the scene felt oddly familiar.
The details had changed completely.
The house was different.
The people were different.
The sport on television had changed.
The student had changed.
But the feeling was exactly the same.
Life had gone from fifteen to forty.
And somehow, the process of learning remained unchanged.
You learn.
You struggle with it.
You slowly make sense of it.
You practice enough times that confusion begins turning into intuition.
And eventually, if you stay with it long enough, you become the person who understands the thing that once felt impossible.
When I started at The Wharton School, I worried constantly about time.
Could I really do this while working full time?
Could I be present for my family and still show up as the student I wanted to be?
The honest answer is that I am still figuring that out.
Time remains the hardest subject in the curriculum.
But something unexpected happened along the way.
I remembered that I actually enjoy learning.
I enjoy becoming a beginner again.
I enjoy wrestling with ideas until they click.
I enjoy sharing study notes, shortcuts, and survival strategies with classmates who are somehow managing careers, children, flights, aging parents, and life while preparing for exams of their own.
There is something comforting about realizing that all of us, despite the titles and resumes and responsibilities, eventually become students again.
Gathered around problem sets.
Comparing notes.
Helping each other understand.
Wondering together:
"How exactly are we supposed to crack this Smetters problem?"
Business school brochures tend to show the classrooms.
The networking events.
The city skylines.
The polished moments.
But this is the part I think I'll remember years from now.
Not just the classes themselves.
The house around the studying.
The smell of lunch cooking.
The sounds of family life happening in the background.
The realization that learning did not belong only to my younger self.
It followed me here too.
Into middle age.
Into parenthood.
Into this noisy, beautiful, complicated life.
And perhaps that is the real gift of becoming a student again.
But discovering that the student in you never actually left.
