{"id":2424,"date":"2026-05-04T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/?p=2424"},"modified":"2026-05-18T12:29:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T16:29:05","slug":"balancing-life-work-and-grad-school-success-tips-from-bernard-drew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/2026\/05\/04\/balancing-life-work-and-grad-school-success-tips-from-bernard-drew\/","title":{"rendered":"Balancing Life, Work, and Grad School: Success Tips from Bernard Drew"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Balancing Life, Work, and Grad School: Success Tips from Bernard Drew\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/4piJyrOqgotVLBVw582o1f?si=4f4826e5b4f94f78&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Are you considering graduate school, juggling work, family, and community commitments, or wondering how to make it all fit together? This week on the Victors in Grad School podcast, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/drchristopherlewis\/\"><strong>Dr. Christopher Lewis<\/strong><\/a> welcomes special guest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/bernarddrew\/\"><strong>Bernard Drew<\/strong><\/a>, business growth consultant at the <a href=\"https:\/\/michigansbdc.org\/\"><strong>Michigan Small Business Development Center<\/strong><\/a>, for an inspiring conversation about perseverance, prioritization, and the power of lifelong learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis sets the stage by reminding listeners that everyone\u2019s grad school journey looks different. Whether you\u2019re freshly accepted, deep in the trenches, or still deciding if it\u2019s the right move, each week\u2019s guest brings a unique perspective. This episode, however, is especially resonant for those returning to school after a significant break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew shares his circuitous journey, going from a mechanical engineering undergrad, to working in business and ministry, to finally pursuing his MBA at Grand Valley State University nineteen years after his first degree. His turning point? A desire to serve more people, steward greater resources, and ensure he was as prepared as possible to give back to his community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A central theme discussed is the reality of balancing responsibilities. Bernard Drew is candid about the challenge: \u201cIf I\u2019m going to add something else to my slate of priorities and responsibilities, it may imply I have to take something off the slate for a season.\u201d From time-blocking Sundays for study sessions at Red Robin, to stepping back from some community commitments, he emphasizes the importance of clearly defining your \u201cglass balls\u201d \u2013 those priorities you cannot drop \u2013 and making peace with temporary sacrifices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The episode delivers actionable advice: Make the decision and the adjustments will follow; communicate boundaries and expectations with work and family; and don\u2019t underestimate the power of a strong support team. Even if you\u2019re returning to school after a long hiatus, leverage your lived experience and collaborate openly\u2014you\u2019ll bring more value to the academic setting than you realize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ready to be inspired? Hear Bernard Drew&#8217;s full story and practical advice for succeeding in graduate school by listening to this episode of \u201cVictors in Grad School.\u201d It\u2019s a must-hear for anyone who dreams of more, but wonders how to make it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Listen now and start writing your own victory story!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TRANSCRIPT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:<br>Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]:<br>Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I&#8217;m your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week we are on a journey together as you are thinking about graduate school and you&#8217;re trying to figure out what is next for you. And every week I love being able to talk to you because it is a journey. And no matter if you are just starting, maybe you&#8217;ve applied, maybe you&#8217;ve gotten accepted, maybe you&#8217;re in graduate school. Doesn&#8217;t matter where you are in this journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:43]:<br>But there are things that you can do right now to be able to prepare yourself, to be able to get yourself ready for success now. And that&#8217;s why every week I bring you different people, different people with different experiences that can help you to be able to see graduate school from a little bit different perspective. And you can see graduate school through the experience that they had. This week. We&#8217;ve got another great guest. Bernard Drew is with us today. And Bernard is a business growth consultant at the Michigan Small Business Development Center. And Bernard has his own journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:20]:<br>He started his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and then went on and got an mba. And we&#8217;ll be talking about that journey that he went on for himself. So I&#8217;m really excited to have him here. Bernard, thanks so much for being here today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:01:32]:<br>Well, good morning. It&#8217;s an absolute pleasure to be part of this discussion with you, and I&#8217;m probably even more honored because I wish I would have known this existed before I started my own journey and glad that you&#8217;re providing this kind of platform from others before they get started on theirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:45]:<br>Well, as I said, I really am appreciative that you&#8217;re being here now. What I want to do is I want to go back in time. And I said, you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, and after that, you. You went off. You got a lot of different experiences along the way that helped you kind of, I&#8217;m going to say, explore many different things in your career and careers per se. And at some point, at some point while you were working in the different jobs and the different careers that you&#8217;ve been in over the years, you came to a point where you made a decision that it was time to go back and it was time to continue your education. Bring me back to that point and what was going through Your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:02:24]:<br>Well, you set that stage very well. I think life has taken some interesting journeys. Undergrad was mechanical engineering. Summer before my freshman year, I had an internship at GM and I made my own business cards that looked exactly like the business cards of my supervisor so I would fit. And I was unapologetic for saying I was going to be the CEO of GM by the time I was 35. In that level of boldness and courage. And then life evolves and you come to discover. I enjoyed engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:02:51]:<br>I did well with engineering, but I had a passion to want to really work in the daily lives of serving people. And so that post graduation journey evolved into a discovery that serving people dynamic in my life was working in ministry and working with people wherever they are in need of hope and a greater sense of identity and helping them to rediscover that for themselves, but also recognize while doing this, while serving people, the people that I&#8217;m serving, they&#8217;re not my source, that there&#8217;s other avenues for financial benefit, financial gain. And there became a desire to grow and discover business. And so for nearly 19 years after undergrad, that was the balance of my life was serving in ministry and operating in business with an emphasis in real estate. And when all said and done, as much as we had great momentum, I&#8217;m enjoying what we&#8217;re doing. It was the revelation that there&#8217;s more people that I want to be able to serve. There&#8217;s greater impact I&#8217;d like to be able to make in the community. There are some programs that I would like to see supported and facilitated to better the lives of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:03:53]:<br>And if given the opportunity to steward hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of resources to support some community endeavors, last thing I would want is to be at the cusp of an opportunity to serve people in that capacity and for whatever reason be deemed ill prepared or ill equipped to properly steward those kind of funds at the detriment of the people that deserve to have those funds and those resources and programs allocated to them. And that&#8217;s what prompted me to say, you know what? Here&#8217;s an opportunity. Let me go ahead and get this mba. That&#8217;s part of what sparked and prompted that course of direction 19 years after undergrad. It was a desire to want to be properly steward resources and better impact the lives of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:31]:<br>And I know that you chose to attend Grand Valley State university for your MBA and there are many MBAs all over the state of Michigan, all over the country and the world. So talk to me about that education journey for yourself and what Was it ultimately that made you decide to select Grand Valley when you identified that as your final choice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:04:54]:<br>I think it&#8217;s a profound question with an extraordinarily simple answer called money. I think that to be concise, I enjoyed my journey providing consulting services independently for small businesses and working in the real estate space, commercial real estate space, for years. And in the course of that journey, I discovered that the SBDC existed, began working with them closely, so closely that they invited me to consult with them as a contractor. And that evolved into an opportunity to work full time, time for our state hub at Grand Valley State, and just call it what it is. Part of the compensation plan is a tuition benefit. And so when all was said and done, that was the driving force that made that decision making pretty simple. And I&#8217;m sure like most people, there&#8217;s an aspiration to better their lives. There&#8217;s an aspiration to improve their capacity to bless their families and those that they serve and elevate themselves professionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:05:47]:<br>But when all said and done, I&#8217;m sure everyone has to at some point stop and evaluate what is the financial investment required to take this academic step and what is my plan for being able to generate a return on that investment, pay it back off and continue to flourish. That definitely was the nail got hit on the head that made that work for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:06]:<br>Now, you already mentioned that it was 19 years from the time that you were in your undergrad to the time that you went into graduate school. And that&#8217;s a lot of time to be able to get out of the student mode, we&#8217;ll say, and being in that thought process, that thought zone of what it means to be a student, but saying that I know that you were successful in going through your graduate degree, you got the mba, you&#8217;ve gone on from there, so you found success in that graduate school journey for yourself. So I guess as you think back to entering into graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do as you got into graduate school and went through graduate school to maintain that success throughout the entire graduate school journey?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:06:54]:<br>I think that&#8217;s a great question. And again, it&#8217;s one of those. I wish I would have had more insight before I started at that point of making the decision. It was just that. Just make the decision and go for it, Bernard. Don&#8217;t overthink it. Don&#8217;t overanalyze, don&#8217;t over critique the unknown. The engineer in me sometimes wants to look at all the variables all the time and make sure everything Lines up and life doesn&#8217;t just line up perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:07:15]:<br>It was just a decision. And as the pieces began to fall into place and it was a reality that this was going to take place, there was a need to rapidly begin to assess how do I balanced life? Now that I have integrated this new commitment of graduate school, and having been out of an academic environment for 19 years, for what I thought it was going to take to make room and time, I didn&#8217;t nearly have the right perspective to understand how much time really was going to need to be allocated. And that was probably the single greatest challenge during and throughout the program was finding a way to, quote, unquote, find some balance. Because I&#8217;ve got a wife, two kids, community commitments, business commitment, work commitment. It was a lot. And so the biggest factor is if I&#8217;m going to add something else to my slate of priorities and responsibilities, it may imply that I have to take something off the slate for a season. And that was a very, very, very hard thing to embrace, let alone implement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:18]:<br>Now, I know that you have completed your degree, you went off, you continued, you&#8217;re still doing business growth consultation and have that skill base, that knowledge base under your belt right now. How do you see yourself utilizing what you learned in your MBA on a daily basis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:08:35]:<br>No, that&#8217;s great. As I prep for this, I&#8217;ll also continue to spin off from that last question. I will say that journey navigating undergraduate school, and I just share this with anyone that&#8217;s there. It takes time and giving yourself the space to reevaluate your own priorities so that you can confidently know what you&#8217;re saying yes to and confidently know what you&#8217;re saying no to is so incredibly important. And some of it you won&#8217;t know until you get into it. But for the most part, I would highly encourage some reflective time to sit down and maybe jot down. These are the things that I prioritize and recognize which things. Yeah, I&#8217;ve heard this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:09:12]:<br>Somebody talked about if you&#8217;re juggling in life and some of the balls are tennis balls, some are baseballs, but some are glass balls, you can drop a tennis ball, it&#8217;s resilient, and you&#8217;re juggling. You can drop a baseball and it&#8217;ll rebound, it&#8217;s resilient. But if you drop that glass ball, it breaks. And you&#8217;ve got to clearly define what are the unbreakable things, the unshakable things, the things that I cannot compromise as I have to pick and choose where my time is going to go. And so figuring out how to clearly define that and be okay if some of those other things fall and be okay with it and know that that was just the choice that you made. And so family, there was some sacrifice of time with family, but I didn&#8217;t want that to be one of the glass balls that I allowed to break. That was something that had to be maintained. Certain commitments with work obviously had to be sustained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:09:55]:<br>But I also say I had some conversations with my supervisor who was very well aware before I got into the process that there was a level understanding, accommodating if I couldn&#8217;t make certain meetings or couldn&#8217;t make certain evening events. Because I was committed to school, they understood and that helped to set the expectation. There were certain things again serving in community and ministry. I had to withdraw from a couple of boards I was on because I did not have the capacity during that time frame to serve them well and provide adequate time and energy towards my studies. And there were just some things that had to be dropped. But then at the appointed time I could choose if it was right after the program to go and pick some of those balls back up. And so I just want to encourage individuals that are listening and considering. It&#8217;d be worth your time to evaluate what&#8217;s the priority, what are the things that you can compromise, the things that you can&#8217;t and be okay that certain things are going to fall, but it&#8217;s temporary, didn&#8217;t have to be permanent and you&#8217;ll be more confident when you&#8217;ve made that decision on purpose, what those things are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:49]:<br>So you just talked about the fact that you had to kind of look at those priorities and you had to try to figure out how to balance those. Talk to me about what you ended up doing to be able to balance balance school, work, family and other responsibilities that you had to be able to maintain the success that you wanted in your graduate school journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:11:08]:<br>I would say one of the keys was time blocking, where I would just dedicate block off time for what is worth. Family knew on Sundays after church, pretty much one o&#8217; clock and afterward that they probably weren&#8217;t going to see me. Typically I had a routine on Sundays. I actually would go to Red Robin. They&#8217;d have football on the TV and I would snap in the gear of studying and reading from Red Robin. I&#8217;d probably be there for an hour and a half, catching a half of a football game, eating and reviewing my notes, reviewing the game plan for what needed to be studied. I would have a team meeting probably about 8 o&#8217; clock that night with folks who were on within my cohort, that we had agreed to work together on certain projects together, and that in between time was a lot of my diligent prep time. Usually we had assignments that had to be submitted by 11:59pm on Sunday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:11:56]:<br>So Sunday was kind of like the crescendo. And that had to be time blocked, as well as some preliminary time blocks throughout the week that, hey, from this time to this time, I&#8217;m preparing for this class. From this time to this time, I&#8217;m preparing for that class. And ideally those time blocks at least gave me, I would say 80% of the time necessary, but then I&#8217;d have to squeeze in a lot of other time elsewhere. But that was one of the key pieces, blocking out that time, clear communication with those around me so that they would know that they&#8217;re not being haphazardly left alone, but that this was the dedicated time and conversely, trying to create dedicated time blocks to spend with them as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:36]:<br>And as you look back at your graduate education and you think about what you had to do, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:12:48]:<br>I think number one is definitely just make the decision. I don&#8217;t know that there is a perfect time and a season for it. Make the decision. And once it&#8217;s made, then it almost forces you to create the time blocking it almost forces you to do the prioritization in life. So just know that, get the application submitted and just get the process started. Even regards to finding capital, I&#8217;m over here considering starting this journey over again with the DBA program over at U of M Flint. And there&#8217;s a reality that you know what need to align some game plans for the capital and align some plans for where the resource is going to come from and just take the next step. And I think that that&#8217;s a big part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:13:24]:<br>I would also encourage heavily one of the big lessons learned. I hadn&#8217;t been in school in so long and when I did finish my undergrad, I was so glad to be finished. I kind of had an attitude like, get me out of here. I don&#8217;t want to see you guys again. Mission accomplice, let&#8217;s move on in life. But I&#8217;ll just say it was a joy to discover that because I was in a program that was so specific to something, I had a passion, I enjoyed my classwork. I think the life and lived experience provided a lot of opportunity for the academic perspective to have the framework to be relevant based on lived experience. In a way that it made my classes that much more practical for me to embrace and understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:14:03]:<br>So if you&#8217;ve been out for a while, see that as an asset, not a liability. I was sitting in class with some classmates who were pretty much my daughter&#8217;s age. I had a daughter who was in her undergraduate program at the same time that I was in my graduate program. And it&#8217;s great to recognize and appreciate what each person brings to the table. Don&#8217;t operate in isolation. Build a team, be collaborative, and learn to respect that more can be accomplished when working together. I think that was one of the greatest virtues when we really hit our stride in the program was when we had a solid team that we were working with and could confidently rely on certain people to carry certain legs of the race, respective assignments each week and projects. And that became more of a virtue over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:14:48]:<br>And if you&#8217;re not accustomed to that, that&#8217;s something I would encourage you to prepare your heart, your mind, even just your way of doing things for. Prepare yourself to work effectively and purposely with other people. It&#8217;ll make the journey that much more impactful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:00]:<br>Well, Bernard, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for all that you shared about the experiences that you&#8217;ve had. And I know that you, as you said, you&#8217;re considering further education. So education never stops and you continue have to look for new ways to be able to challenge yourself. But I really appreciate you being here today and I wish you all the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Drew [00:15:19]:<br>I greatly appreciate it. I&#8217;m grateful that you have this platform. And again, I just appreciate the encouragement, the practical perspective that it can give to those who are considering or are in their journey, and hope there&#8217;s some inspiration that allows that journey to be all the more simpler. So thank you very much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:35]:<br>The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master&#8217;s and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you&#8217;re looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you considering graduate school, juggling work, family, and community commitments, or wondering how to make it all fit together? This week on the Victors in Grad School podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes special guest Bernard Drew, business growth consultant at the Michigan Small Business Development Center, for an inspiring conversation about perseverance, prioritization, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":509,"featured_media":2432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,13,45],"tags":[638,2422,2954,522,58,44,2347,1299,31,27,82,32,95,30,42,2952,846,54,909,895,2437,2957,2368,750,226,53,832],"class_list":["post-2424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-administration","category-graduate-school-general","category-podcast","tag-adult-learners","tag-alumni-stories","tag-business-growth","tag-career-development","tag-choosing-a-graduate-program","tag-choosing-a-graduate-school","tag-education-podcast","tag-grad-school-success","tag-graduate-degree","tag-graduate-school","tag-grand-valley-state-university","tag-higher-education","tag-lifelong-learning","tag-masters-degree","tag-masters-degree-2","tag-mba-journey","tag-mentorship","tag-podcast","tag-prioritization","tag-professional-development","tag-returning-to-school","tag-small-business","tag-student-advice","tag-time-management","tag-university-of-michigan-flint-2","tag-victors-in-grad-school","tag-work-life-balance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2424"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}