Ashley Cousins T’17 is from Charlottesville, Virginia. She attended Spelman College in Atlanta Georgia where she studied economics. Prior to Tuck, she worked for Google and then Delta, where she was focused on international partnerships. This summer she is interning at Esteé Lauder.
Not initially. I’m a first generation college student, so I couldn’t really imagine myself here 10 years ago. But I knew I wanted an undergraduate degree. I think toward my junior or senior year I started thinking about getting an MBA, but I wanted to get more work experience before I started applying to schools. I really wanted to figure out what I wanted to do before business school so I could maximize my time and focus as opposed to trying to figure out what I wanted to do while in business school.
I worked for about four and a half years before I went to business school. I worked at Google for two and a half years in the sales organization for large organizations. It was great to be in the tech space, but I knew I was going to pursue an MBA and I wanted to round out my perspective before going to business school. I wanted to work in emerging markets, so I transitioned to Delta where I worked in international partnerships. My job was to increase the loyalty database in Brazil and the Caribbean by strategically positioning Delta’s brand and managing partnerships in those regions.
I want to go into beauty which is a very non-traditional path for business school. The options were very, very thin. You always hear about how great Tuck alumni are, so I wanted to test this out. I reached out to alumni at all the schools I was accepted to, and I was really impressed by Tuck. I talked to an alumnus at Esteé Lauder and although he worked in a completely different field from marketing, he was more than willing to assist me in learning about the culture of Esteé Lauder and if it was a great fit for me. He took me to lunch, showed me store fronts, and competitor’s store fronts. It was extremely fascinating. Not many people go above and beyond in a situation where they have nothing to gain from it. He didn’t really have to do what he did. 
Tuck alumni did way more than I expected, so that really sealed the deal for me.
It’s been really crazy—it was a major adjustment. I should write a blog post just on transitioning from the South to the Northeast. I didn’t even own a winter coat. Here, everyone was telling me to get Bean boots. I was like, “What are Bean boots??” I came from 90 degree weather, and when I got here it was 70 degrees which is basically fall for me, but it was still summer. It took a while to adjust to the New England lifestyle. I went apple picking for the first time. I went skiing for the first time. Overall it’s been great but also tough.
If you’ve made it to a place like Tuck, you’re probably really hard on yourself. So being in situations where you’re constantly challenging yourself can be immensely draining at times because you want to be great. You want to be great at everything. At some point, at the end of Fall B, I realized that I can’t be great at everything. It’s impossible. What I can do is stretch myself to learn as much as I possibly can to leave Tuck better than I came in. That’s the transition that you make in Fall B. It’s about learning that you try your best, but it’s impossible to be great at everything. The people who learn this faster tend to have an easier transition, but it is hard and people handle it differently.
I am the academic rep for the T’17s, which is interesting because I take my academics seriously, but I also understand that I can’t kill myself to get the best grades. So I like to find a balance and be involved socially as well and get to know more of my classmates. Every time I go out, I feel like I get to know people better and that feels great. I’ve learned that you just have to go out and force yourself to be social. I try to be in some-what of a leadership position on campus, I want to hang out with my classmates, and I try to do well in academics. I don’t try to be the best at any one thing—I try to be good enough in each to where I’m satisfied with myself. Sometimes this is harder than other times since I’m tough on myself. When I first got to Tuck I thought I was the only one who was having a tough time transitioning, then one day you talk with your classmates and you realize that most are having a tough time transitioning and balancing it all. It’s almost like a bond is formed over the toughness of how everything works—it’s really what makes us all closer.
I think the number one thing is admitting when you need help. You’d be amazed at how many people are willing to help you when you need it. There are times when I can’t get my head around certain things, and then I study with my study group mates. I’ve been on the phone until 2 a.m. with a friend, working on problems in a class that he wasn’t even in. I had told him I was struggling and he helped me. And in turn, the classes that I’m strong in, I help out others. I think, because we’re not competitive at Tuck, we’re even more willing to help each other.
Lastly, it’s really important for you to take time for yourself—even if it’s only five or ten minutes—and sit and do nothing to process your own thoughts. It’s not a long time, but it’s definitely needed. There are times where I pencil in things on my calendar where it’s just for “me time.”
As the academic rep, I had to plan section wars which is a big to-do on campus. I was first impressed by how many of my classmates volunteered their time to help plan something that we honestly really didn’t understand what it was. We were all figuring out what it was as we were doing it. At one point I was so overwhelmed and I didn’t know how to say I was overwhelmed. One of my classmates saw me one day, and he saw just saw it in my eyes. He stopped and took the time to say, “I can see you’re overwhelmed and need help, what do you need to do today?” So I gave him a list of what I had to do regarding the party that night, and he took over almost 70 percent of it and just did it! He absolutely didn’t have to do that, but he did. I also realized from this that Tuck is so small that you can’t hide. People are always going to notice when you need help and say hey, I’m here for you. For me that was one moment that was really great. It’s easy to ask how someone is doing, but it takes a special person to fill in the gaps of somebody else’s needs.