How the Weekend MBA can fit your already busy life

Can I actually do this?

The question that stops prospective applicants from applying to the Weekend MBA is simple and extremely common: Can someone like me, with a life like mine, really take this on?

The four alumni in this article were asked to sit down and answer that question honestly. All four are working professionals in Luxembourg, all four juggled significant personal and professional demands during their two years in the program, and all four — without exception — say yes. Not a polished, marketing-approved yes. A yes earned from experience.

Federica Angioni was a Strategy Manager at Amazon Web Services who was travelling for work from Tuesday to Thursday or Friday, arriving back in Luxembourg just in time for class on Friday evening and Saturday. Her academic background was in Chinese studies — nothing in business. Her manager had advised her that she needed to build up more business acumen if she wanted to grow. 

Natalia Dicusara, now with Johnson Controls, was transitioning from accounting into tax compliance at Maples Group while simultaneously completing the MBA. A self-described sports fanatic, she was determined not to let the program diminish the training regime that was dear to her. She used structure, determination, and some creative use of time to ensure she maintained her edge both inside and outside the programs.

Mario Marozzi, now CFO at Renaissance Partners and a visiting faculty member at LSB, started the program on the 6th of March, 2020. Ten days later, Luxembourg went into COVID lockdown. He had a full-time job in finance, two children (now three), an apartment, and a city that had just closed. He finished in March 2022, and by September was teaching at the school. His current CFO role came via a classmate who called him eighteen months after graduation.

Ana Sapina was and still is Business Manager to the Country Manager at UBS Luxembourg. Prior to that, she was Head of the CEO Office at Credit Suisse in Luxembourg. She enrolled for the MBA at the end of August and started in September — almost no lead time to plan. During her two years, she navigated one of the most turbulent periods in European banking with the UBS acquisition of Credit Suisse, changed teams, absorbed extra workload at work, and had a baby. She presented her final project with her newborn at home and finished the program strongly.

Four people. Four completely different lives. One program. Here is what they found.

A Program Designed Around the Fact That You Have a Life

Before getting into strategies and routines, it is worth pausing on something that often gets lost in conversations about workload: the Weekend MBA was specifically designed for people in your situation. This is not an accident of scheduling. It is a deliberate architectural decision.

Classes run on Friday evenings and Saturdays. Not Monday mornings. Not block weeks in other cities that require you to take a week off every quarter and travel long distances. Not evening classes every night of the week that leave no room for your family. The format was built around the reality that the people who most benefit from an MBA are also the people who can least afford to disappear from their lives for two years.

Mario, who had specifically researched the landscape of executive MBA options before choosing LSB, was explicit about why the format was the deciding factor for him.

“I cannot travel like every second week. I cannot take a week off every two months. A lot of business schools in Europe do that. Luxembourg was a good place, and the Weekend MBA program was the perfect fit — considering family, full-time job, and so on.”
 — Mario Marozzi

He had friends doing programs where the structure required being on campus for a full week every few weeks. For someone with young children and an established life in Luxembourg, this was simply not viable.

“A friend of mine was doing HEC [Paris] — I think it was an 18-month program, a bit shorter, but you had to be there like a week every couple of weeks. That didn’t work for me at all.”  — Mario Marozzi

Federica, who was already spending most of her working week in transit, reached the same conclusion from a different angle.

“I was traveling so much and I still had to deliver. But at one point I was taking calls with my group even when I was at the hotel. You make it work. I mean, I didn’t want to spend the weekend taking a plane or a train to Paris or Milan.”  — Federica Angioni

This matters because it reframes the nature of the ask. The Weekend MBA does not require you to restructure your entire professional life. It requires you to restructure your weekends and your week-day margins. That is still a real ask. But it is a different category of ask.

And the support structure extends beyond the timetable. The faculty — many of them practitioners themselves, not just academics — design their courses with full awareness that every student in the room has a full-time job, probably a family, and possibly a manager who thinks this MBA is a hobby. Professors build their syllabuses knowing this. Ana found this out firsthand.

“I imagine some subjects with a lot of things to read or extremely heavy workloads. We asked the teachers to reduce the workload a little bit and also adjust the submission dates. We were always in contact with the teachers, and if we needed more time, they postponed the submission date. They were so flexible.”  — Ana Sapina

The most striking example she offers is her own. She gave birth during the final project, had to limit her presence for a significant portion of it, and still graduated with a strong grade.

“I delivered a baby. I was only half-time on the project — I worked a lot at the beginning, and they were all aware: Dino, Eric, everyone. After I had the baby, my colleagues were the first ones saying, ‘Anna, we do it. You don’t need to connect. It’s okay.’ And in the end, we presented with a very good grade. If they see you are motivated and working with interest, the teachers are very good. Very flexible.”  — Ana Sapina

This is not an institution that is indifferent to the complexity of its students’ lives. It is one that was founded on the understanding of that complexity.

The First Thing to Reshape Is Not Your Schedule. It’s Your Mindset.

Every one of these alumni says some version of the same thing, unprompted, when asked how they made it work: before any tactic or routine or reading app, the thing that matters most is how you frame the challenge.

The framing that high achievers typically bring to a new challenge is perfectionism. Read everything. Submit early. Ask the best questions in class. Do not fall behind. This instinct, while understandable, is the one most likely to break you in a program like this.

Federica, who describes herself as someone who loves strategy and visualisation, eventually developed a more useful mental model. She and Mario both, independently, reached for the same metaphor.

“It’s going to be a marathon. It’s not 400 metres where you just go a sprint. You need to pace your effort. Some things you can let go a little. Even if you don’t take always an A, it’s fine — just do it. Because at one point I realised the majority of people doing the MBA become obsessed with perfection. And it’s not about perfection.”
 — Federica Angioni

Mario makes a related but distinct point: the program works if you take it seriously as a learning experience, not merely as a credential to collect.

“If you make an investment of this much — money, time, energy — you should take it seriously in the sense that you want to get something out of it. Not just something that goes on your CV. It’s a lot of work. But it’s manageable, for sure — if you are a person who can organise themselves.”
 — Mario Marozzi

Ana’s version of the mindset shift was less deliberate and perhaps more powerful for it. She enrolled so quickly — end of August for a September start — that she didn’t have time to talk herself out of it.

“To be honest, I didn’t really think about time or all the things that were happening. I just went for it. And to be honest, it was the best thing I ever did. Because maybe if I had to think a lot — you know how it is, people start to measure things, and maybe you would be a little bit afraid to go for it.”  — Ana Sapina

Federica’s friend, who had nothing to do with LSB, gave her the push with a simple piece of logic.

“She told me: it’s just two years. Why don’t you try? If you don’t do it, nothing happens. If you do it, worst case scenario, you’re just a little bit more tired. And I was like: she’s right.”  — Federica Angioni

That framing — the opportunity cost of not doing it — stayed with Federica throughout the program and is now what she passes on when new prospective students reach out.

“The best question is not ‘can I do it?’ The best question is: what happens if I don’t? You miss more by not doing things than by doing them. If you don’t do it, I mean — you’ll still be the same person. If you do it, so many other things can happen.”  — Federica Angioni

Natalia received a piece of advice in the early weeks of the program that turned out to be one of the most valuable she got — not from a professor, but from her managing director, who was watching her adapt to the new rhythm.

“He was asking me about the MBA. I was telling him we have very smart people, everyone asks such good questions, it feels like everyone is so smart. And he just told me: I know that everyone is sometimes listening just to ask questions because it’s the beginning and everyone wants to show that they know they’re smart. But in those cases, especially at the beginning, it’s better to take a step back and just listen and observe. And you’re going to learn way more just by observing.”  — Natalia Dicusara

She put it into practice.

“At the beginning I was trying to get with everyone on the same spirit — do it, push, you have frustrations that the questions are not coming up as good as others. But I think when you take a step back, just listen and observe, then naturally you calm down and everything starts to take a nice pace.”  — Natalia Dicusara

The pattern across all four conversations is consistent: the people who struggled most in the early months were those who tried to do everything at maximum intensity from day one. The ones who thrived — or at least survived without burning out — were those who found a sustainable pace early and protected it.

Organisation Is the Non-Negotiable. What It Looks Like Is Up to You.

If mindset is the foundation, organisation is the scaffolding. Every alumnus in this article returns to it, and every one of them means something slightly different by it.

For Mario, whose professional life in finance is built on planning and precision, the approach was almost instinctive. But even he is clear that the habits need to be built before the program starts — not once you are already inside it.

“Organisation, planning — that’s the A, B and C of anything. You need to get on the right track from day one. Because the more you procrastinate, the more you just keep running after things rather than anticipating them, the worse it gets. Things just accumulate and don’t clean up by themselves. Start thinking about it from day zero, even before starting the MBA. Start waking up at 5:30 so that you don’t need to arrive in the first week and have a nightmare.”  — Mario Marozzi

His specific routine: up at 5:15am every morning, studying from 5:30 until the children woke at 6:30 or 7:45. Then an hour to an hour and a half most evenings, roughly four times a week. Weekend class days were for class. Sundays, on non-class weekends, he protected for family.

“I’m an early bird. My productivity in the first hour in the office is almost the same as the remaining ten or eleven hours. In terms of clarity and focus, it’s top. My wife is like ‘how can you do it?’ — for her, at 10pm she can’t even read something she likes. She falls asleep.”  — Mario Marozzi

Natalia had a similar instinct for early mornings, but integrated study into something she was already doing: training.

“I had to allocate daily at least an hour or two for the readings to be able to do the assignments at the end of the week. The way I structured it is: I woke up at 5, I went to the gym, and normally I allocate one hour on the treadmill walking. So I was just taking with me the papers, the readings — and just on the treadmill I was reading to save time. Whatever I was doing where I could free my hands, I was reading the material.” — Natalia Dicusara

The approach inspired at least one classmate to replicate it.

“There was another guy from LSB doing the program at the same time — a different generation. He saw me, and he said, ‘I’m going to do the same.’ After that I was seeing him with the papers at the gym, doing the bike, reading. Which was fun — but it was a way to optimise time.”  — Natalia Dicusara

Federica’s version of organisation was less about fixed routines and more about intentional mapping. She designed an overall structure at the outset of each module — a habit she traces back to her professor Dr. Mirna Koričan Lajtman.

“Mirna always said: if you don’t know things, just put a checklist. And then you say: this is how I want the things to go. How do I make the best of it, but also give the best of it? I like to visualise things and I usually do it for almost everything. I map stuff with the dates and the objectives. Okay, so we have three months, three assignments — one by yourself and two by group. How do we do it? And you work backwards, fitting everything else in your life. That’s how it worked for me.”  — Federica Angioni

Ana’s system was anchor-based. She identified non-negotiable study time and protected it, then filled in the rest around it.

“The Sundays were always blocked. Always, for me. And during the week, I was taking the opportunity of lunchtime at work to read. I was eating and I was reading. If we had a lot of things to read, that was one of my strategies. Or I was in the tram reading as well. Instead of being on Instagram or social media, I was reading the articles.”  — Ana Sapina

She also planned proactively around disruptions rather than reacting to them.

“If I would go on holiday, I would plan it two weeks in advance to have everything read. Or even when I was on holiday, I was reading on my phone. You plan for it rather than let it catch you.”  — Ana Sapina

Natalia, who describes herself as someone who runs well on internal structure but recognises this isn’t universal, frames her system simply.

“It was more in my head. I don’t think I had anything written down. But to me that was easy because I work really well with routine and structure. I had to block things, know exactly what I do and when I do it. But I know a lot of people do not work that way.”  — Natalia Dicusara

Finding Time in Places You Didn’t Know Existed

One of the more liberating realisations that emerges from these conversations is this: the Weekend MBA does not primarily demand large, uninterrupted blocks of time. It demands a new relationship with the small gaps in your day. The commute. The waiting room. The lunch hour. The fifteen minutes between one meeting and the next.

Three of the four alumni independently arrived at the same discovery: reading apps that convert text to audio transformed their relationship with the material.

“I downloaded an application on my phone that reads documents. While I was commuting, instead of reading the paper, I would copy and paste the text and listen to it on the tram. That one really, really helped me. There are some moments in your life when you cannot stop and read — but you can listen. Train yourself to find different solutions.”
 — Federica Angioni

“We all downloaded these reading applications. You charge up the PDF file, and in the evenings or any time you are doing something, you are basically listening rather than reading. Some evenings I was ironing and just had it running.”  — Mario Marozzi

“There are some apps where you can put the book or the article. And I am doing stuff, and I am listening. It helps a lot, especially because it is a part-time MBA — you work, you have a lot of things going on, you are in the car. I was very, very happy with this.”  — Ana Sapina

Ana also found a YouTube resource for one of her modules that surprised her.

“In Supply Chain, there is even on YouTube — the big book you need to read, the entire reading — it’s there. I could do other things at the same time while I was listening. Yes.”  — Ana Sapina

Beyond audio, the tactics diverge — sometimes in directly opposite directions. Which is itself worth understanding: the right approach depends entirely on who you are.

The Lunchtime Question

Ana found eating lunch at her desk while reading to be one of her most reliable time-pockets. She names it as a specific strategy she would recommend.

“Lunchtime at work: I was eating and I was reading. It was one of my strategies. If we had a lot of things to read, I was taking the opportunity.”  — Ana Sapina

Natalia’s experience was the opposite.

“Lunchtime often didn’t work for me. I was saying, I’m going to do that during lunchtime — but it was rarely working. Because sometimes you need a little bit of time to unwind, socialise with your colleagues, or just get away from your desk. Lunchtime was the challenging time.”  — Natalia Dicusara

Mario, who has back-to-back meetings most days, had a similar finding.

“Lunch for me was meetings after meetings. Much worse than in the morning.”  — Mario Marozzi

The point is not to prescribe a single approach. It is to suggest that before you start, it is worth thinking honestly about when your own energy peaks, where the natural gaps in your day actually are, and what kind of focus different environments give you.

Always Having the Material With You

Natalia develops a habit she describes as transformative: carrying the material at all times, with zero friction to picking it up.

“Always have the material with you, wherever you go. I knew: if it’s in my bag and I’m waiting in a queue, I was just taking out the material and having some readings. That was a way to free up time for going for a drink with a friend from time to time. The material was quite manageable to read in half an hour. Some pieces were an hour, which was okay.”  — Natalia Dicusara

The Early Morning Advantage

Both Mario and Federica, though they had different general schedules, converge on the early morning as uniquely valuable. Mario structures his entire study routine around it. Federica uses it as an overflow valve in particularly heavy weeks.

“Sometimes I had to wake up at five to start studying or do some reading. Other times were better — I could do the reading during flight time or train time. I don’t really have a fixed schedule. It depends on the workload from my job. But I prefer to wake up early than go to sleep too late.”  — Federica Angioni

What Didn’t Work: The Honest Version

A conversation about strategies would be incomplete without the failures. All four alumni were candid about approaches they tried and abandoned.

Ana came into the program with well-established study habits from her undergraduate degree. She wrote detailed summaries after every class. She took structured notes. She processed and consolidated everything in writing. These habits had served her well for years. In the Weekend MBA, they proved incompatible with her life.

“In university I was writing everything — summaries, my thoughts, everything. I tried to keep doing that, to write a summary after the class. It didn’t work at all. I didn’t have the time. My way of studying has always been to write — and I wanted to keep that going. But it didn’t work. I could not in the end, unfortunately, really write everything in an organised, summarised way. So I was mainly reading and listening instead.” — Ana Sapina

She adapted. She developed her visual memory. She used audio. She took lighter notes and trusted the discussions in class to consolidate her thinking. It was a different way of learning, and it worked.

Federica is honest that even the best map does not survive contact with life entirely intact.

“Life happens. I didn’t expect some stuff, so I had to adjust. I was told, don’t worry, we will make sure you have time. It didn’t always happen. I was travelling so much and I still had to deliver.”  — Federica Angioni

Mario’s caution is structural rather than personal: the format of the program does not enforce the same weekly discipline as a traditional university course, and the lack of external scaffolding can catch people off guard.

“You see the teacher twice, basically, in the entire module. You get a syllabus. You need to understand yourself what the objectives are, and make your own idea of what you want to get out of each course. This is not university where you get very strict things to do every week. You’re responsible for your own momentum.”  — Mario Marozzi

Natalia notes that the first semester carries a particular psychological weight that can distort judgment about one’s own capacity.

“At the beginning, it starts to be very overwhelming. You want to perform well, you want to show you know things, you don’t want to lag behind. And this feeling of ‘I want to do it’ puts a little bit of pressure and it becomes overwhelming. You could see across the entire cohort this pressure to perform.”  — Natalia Dicusara

Ana describes a motivational dip that tends to arrive after the initial rush of the first semester — something she considers important to flag to anyone starting out.

“When you start the MBA, you are very, very motivated. So you do everything one or two weeks in advance. You are very: I need to deliver this. And then, after the first semester, your motivation goes a little bit down. That’s when you start to see things getting too close to the submission day. You need to be organised and keep things moving. Because even if the motivation dips, you are already in a rhythm — and you are already used to it.”  — Ana Sapina

You Are Not Doing This Alone: Support Can Be Found in Many Corners

Ask someone who has not done a part-time MBA what they think will help the most, and they will probably say time management. Ask someone who has done one, and they will say: the people around you.

Not just any people. The right people, in the right places — at home, at work, and in the room with you on Saturday mornings.

At Home

Every alumnus who has a partner or family mentions this first and emphasises it most. The program does not just affect you. It affects the people who share your evenings, your Saturdays, your grocery runs, your mental bandwidth. The ones who manage this best are the ones who had the conversation before day one, not after the stress started.

“The MBA was a decision my wife and I took together. It was not me deciding I want to do the MBA and her finding out. She knew I wanted it for a couple of years. So she took care of the kids in the evenings. It changed our lifestyle a bit — but we planned for that.”  — Mario Marozzi

Ana’s framing of her husband’s contribution is both specific and generous.

“He did everything. Basically, during that period, he was the one to do everything. Food, groceries, housework. No pressure at all if my holidays needed to shift because we had an assignment. This part is very important. He was also very supportive about the baby. We don’t have family here in Luxembourg, so it was even more workload for him. Very, very challenging. But he was the support.”  — Ana Sapina

Federica is direct with new students on this point.

“Make sure your family understands and supports you. The last thing you want is to spend these years studying and also feeling guilty about not being home. Two years go very fast. It’s a good commitment, but it’s a very good investment too. And it’s also their effort — not just yours.”  — Federica Angioni

At Work

The workplace dynamic is more varied — and perhaps more instructive for the range of situations prospective students might be in.

Ana had exceptional support from her leadership team at UBS. It went beyond tolerance: her CEO and COO were actively helpful with coursework that overlapped with their shared professional domain.

“With my CEO, COO, and CFO, I was doing a lot of work assignments. A lot of subjects I was studying also had support from them. Sometimes they were staying longer just to help me on something. I was very lucky. The support from all sides — work, partner, cohort — these three factors were essential for the success of the MBA for me.”  — Ana Sapina

Federica’s workplace was more complicated. Promises were made that were not always kept. She adapted.

“I was told, don’t worry, we will make sure you have the time. It didn’t happen. I was travelling so much and I still had to deliver. But it’s okay. At one point I was taking calls with my group from hotel rooms. You make it work. It’s incredible what you can do.”  — Federica Angioni

Mario drew a firm boundary that protected his professional performance throughout: he never studied during working hours. The discipline was personal, but it also prevented any ambiguity with his employer.

“At work it was not an issue because I never studied during working hours. The arrangements were with my wife, with the kids. Work just didn’t need to be part of that equation.”  — Mario Marozzi

Natalia used a formal provision some people may not know about — Luxembourg’s government study leave which can offer up to 20 days per year — to create a structural solution rather than relying on goodwill.

“You basically submit to the government a letter with a request for study leave. You attach the agreements and certification from the school. They grant you the days, and you can spread them across the two years as you want. I was mostly taking Fridays — so I was four days a week at work and Fridays off to work on assignments.” — Natalia Dicusara

The Cohort: An Asset You Cannot Fully Anticipate

There is something that happens in a cohort of working professionals doing an MBA together that is difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it. Part of it is shared suffering, yes. But mostly it is something more interesting: the discovery that the people sitting next to you are both brilliant at different things and struggling in some of the same ways you are.

Ana names her cohort as one of her three essential success factors, alongside her partner and her workplace support.

“One of the key successes of the whole MBA is really the people you are with. There were subjects I was not very familiar with, and our cohort was very helpful in everything. We were meeting on weekends, meeting outside working hours, just to exchange ideas and really help people who were not so familiar with certain subjects. Because of that, we were very well prepared. I mean, we got to talk a lot, so we had a very, very good cohort. Very, very lucky.”  — Ana Sapina

Federica describes a moment from a quantitative module that captures the spirit of this cohort dynamic. Numbers were not her strength. Then a classmate stepped up on a Sunday afternoon and changed everything.

“We had this case where one of our classmates — he was very good on this topic. He said: ‘Listen, I’m going to explain to you step by step.’ On Sunday, for three hours, he went through it in detail. You know, during classes sometimes you have questions and then you don’t ask because you’re tired — and then when you go through your notes, you’re like, wait, I don’t understand. So you start talking with your classmates, and there was one who said, okay, I know how to do it. Let’s talk Sunday at this time, and for two hours I’m going to go through it step by step. You really need to rely on your team.”  — Federica Angioni

Federica adds that the program’s group-assignment structure is not incidental to this. It deliberately engineers interdependence.

“The structure is done so that you work in groups. So you must at one point — even if you are not a trusting person, even if you don’t trust others — you must trust others to do their workload. You are constantly forced to know yourself in a different way. It’s all related to leadership style. You are forced to find your own leadership style working with a team.”  — Federica Angioni

Mario, whose professional background lends itself to independent work, found the group dynamic worked best as a form of mutual accountability and informal tutoring.

“Some subjects my fellow students were struggling with — accounting, finance. I was reviewing their work before submission. I was doing mine, the easy part, and I was advising them how to do it. You get a bit of that. Not formal study groups — but looking out for each other.”  — Mario Marozzi

And the cohort relationship, it transpires, does not end at graduation. Federica’s WhatsApp group from the program is still active.

“We still talk very often. Not only to celebrate stuff — even when there are things coming up in the news. This is what I think we all miss now that we’ve finished the MBA. The exchange. The incredible exchange we were facing during class, but even outside of class.”  — Federica Angioni

For Mario, the network delivered something even more tangible. His current CFO role arrived not through a job application, but through a classmate who called him eighteen months after graduation.

“She called me and said: Mario, can we have a chat? I just started with this new company looking for a CFO — are you interested? I can introduce you. So my current job, I found it through someone from my generation. We were not even close friends. She knew I was a finance person, she had the opportunity, and she called. And now I’m here.”  — Mario Marozzi

It’s Work, But It’s the Kind of Work You’ve Been Missing.

Perhaps the most important thing in this article is something that prospective students almost never consider when they are worrying about workload. They imagine that every hour spent on the MBA is an hour of obligation — something grinding and effortful added to an already full life. A tax on your weekends.

The alumni describe something very different.

They describe curiosity switching back on after years of professional autopilot. They describe reading articles they would never have touched before and wanting to read more. They describe the specific pleasure of sitting in a classroom on a Saturday morning, surrounded by people who challenge your thinking, and realising you understand something about the world that you did not understand the week before.

For many working professionals in their thirties and forties, this is not an experience they get anywhere else. Their jobs, however demanding, tend to run in well-worn grooves. The Weekend MBA is something else: a jolt of intellectual energy in the middle of your working life, delivered in a format designed not to destroy it.

“Your mind just goes so fast. You start reading things you would never have read before. You start looking for other articles, news about the topic — because you’re like, wait, I didn’t know anything about this. What is actually happening right now? I was reading the Financial Times and suddenly I understood what these words meant — I started looking for more. I started looking for movies, documentaries, papers that had been written before. That’s what we miss after finishing the MBA.”
 — Federica Angioni

She describes what happened in her professional life in parallel with this intellectual awakening.

“For me, the MBA really changed a lot during those two years. I was able to participate in discussions and trigger new conversations. In a way, I elevated my position in different kinds of discussions internally in the leadership. It was really, really helpful for my career — definitely.”  — Federica Angioni

Mario pushes back against the framing of workload as intrinsically burdensome with characteristic directness.

“The majority of things I read were extremely interesting. Not just for the sake of reading — for the sake of learning something. You’re essentially paying someone to guide you toward what is most efficient for a specific subject. If you want to learn it, you should not see the workload as something negative. You should see it as: I am learning. This is what I signed up for.”  — Mario Marozzi

Natalia identifies a particular kind of growth that the program catalyses: the development of confidence, presence, and the ability to hold yourself in professional situations that used to feel difficult.

“It helps to develop a type of charisma that everyone wants. Because there is a lot of public speaking. You have to present projects, you have to sell, you have to learn to control your emotions when you negotiate. I don’t know a person who would say: I don’t want that. I don’t want to speak freely in public or communicate better. From this perspective, there’s going to be a lot of fun with the projects, presentations, competing with teams. It’s very interactive. You develop a type of charisma.”  — Natalia Dicusara

She also notes something that the MBA made possible at exactly the right career moment: the ability to apply new knowledge in real time.

“When you do a career transition during the MBA, it’s a good opportunity to start from scratch and apply everything you learn at your new job. Because when you have been in the same job for five or ten years, making changes is more challenging — there’s history, people know you in a certain way. But when you do this transition, I think during the MBA, you start clean.”  — Natalia Dicusara

Ana captures the peculiar, unexpected feeling of finishing the program — something that surprises everyone who imagines the final day will bring pure relief.

“When I finished, it was very weird. I had a baby, so I had a lot of things to do. But I kind of missed it a little bit. My colleagues were the same. We have frequent dinners and they always say: sometimes I don’t know what to do with my free time, because you get into that kind of pace and you get used to it. Which is nice. I actually liked it, the rhythm.”  — Ana Sapina

Federica, whose passion for the program is evident in everything she says, puts it simply.

“You learn that you are much more powerful than you really think. And I swear, it’s such an incredible feeling. Your mind goes so fast. You understand so many new things, you have a different perspective. And it’s worth it.”  — Federica Angioni

On the Days It Feels Like Too Much

There will be a moment. Federica knows this. Mario knows this. Every alumnus who is being honest with you knows this.

There will be a point in the program — Federica places it around the fourth semester, roughly halfway through the second year — when the accumulated weight of it lands on you. The job is pressing. An assignment is due. The weekend you had mentally set aside for breathing space is now full of reading. And the thought arrives, fully formed: I am not going to make it.

“There is a point when everyone that I know who did the MBA said to themselves: okay, this is too hard. I’m not going to make it. And it’s usually around the fourth semester, when you are almost over the halfway point. That is exactly the moment when you have to say: okay. Now I just have to roll like a rolling stone. Just do it, do it, do it, do it — without asking yourself too many questions. Because then you’re going to miss it. It’s true. When we started, the director said ‘so many students ask if we also offer a PhD’ and we were all like ‘oh, that’s just bragging.’ And actually it’s true. You finish and you think: what am I going to do next? Maybe I can do a PhD.” — Federica Angioni

Two practical things help in these moments. The first is your cohort — who, as already noted, have been in the same room with you and are almost certainly feeling the same thing.

The second is the faculty. Ana’s experience is worth quoting at length here, because it challenges an assumption many prospective students carry: that asking for help or flexibility is a sign of weakness, or that the institution will treat it as such.

“If it’s too much, the class can actually approach the teacher and ask, because they are so flexible. We were asking frequently — sometimes we had four submissions on Sunday or work that needed more development, and we needed extra time. The teachers were always in contact, and they postponed submission dates. There is no judgment at all. They are not going to say: ‘because you asked for more time, I give you 15 instead of 17.’ You are not being penalised for having a complicated life.”  — Ana Sapina

She makes the point that this flexibility matters more than people expect, and that understanding it in advance changes how you approach the hard moments.

“If a person is afraid — this is important for them to know: there is flexibility. And if you are organised, you can manage it perfectly. If everyone does it, and they do the MBA with kids, with demanding jobs, with everything — if they can manage, everyone can manage as well. Life comes. Of course there are things that happen in your personal life that affect your motivation. But this will pass. Just be reminded that you have people you can go to.”  — Ana Sapina

Federica’s closing thought is perhaps the most honest summary of the full arc of the program — and the best possible answer to the question that opens this article.

“You need to make sure you understand you are going to make effort. But it’s going to be worth it. Because if you don’t do it, you will still be the same person. If you do it, so many other things can happen. You can have new friends — some of my classmates were the only people standing with me through a very hard year. You build very strong relationships. And then you have this huge knowledge, this new curiosity, this new — for me, it was incredible. It was worth it.”  — Federica Angioni

Summary

The Weekend MBA is demanding. These four alumni will not pretend otherwise. They have described early mornings, late nights, family negotiations, motivational dips, impossible Sundays, and one classmate who powered through a final project with a newborn at home.

But they have also described something that does not appear in the prospectus: the particular quality of engagement that comes from putting yourself up to something hard in the middle of your adult working life. The experience of being genuinely challenged intellectually, surrounded by a cohort of people who share that experience, and coming out the other side with not just a degree but a different relationship with your own capabilities.

That is what the worry about workload does not account for. It imagines the program as a burden. The alumni describe it as an awakening.

Can you do it?

Ana’s answer: “You have time. You just need to manage in a different way. You can definitely manage. If everyone does it, everyone can manage as well.”

Federica’s answer: “If you don’t do it, nothing’s going to change. If you do it — worst case scenario, you’re just a little bit more tired. And actually, it’s incredible. It was worth it.”

Mario’s answer: “It’s a lot of work. But it’s manageable, for sure.”

Natalia’s answer: “I believe it’s very doable. People with marriages, kids, and so on do it. What’s most important is to have structure. If you have structure, it’s quite doable to keep on the things you enjoy, do an MBA, and also take on opportunities at work.”

Published: 06 May 2026
Interviews were conducted in April 2026