Revista MBA

I recently stopped by the old office.  I almost cancelled at the last moment, because it’s a huge pain in the ass to get to now that I don’t have a car, but mostly because I had conflicted feelings about going there again.  I gave notice nearly 2 months before I had heard from INSEAD; it was review time and I just didn’t want to go through the motions of setting goals for the following year.  My goals would have included something like, ‘quit job,’ ‘see the world’ which wouldn’t have been in line with what the company wanted to do.    

I needed a way to ensure that I would not stay in my job if I had gotten rejected by the school.  So I bought a one-way plane ticket.  

The idea came from my then four-time-ex (now maybe-no-longer-an-ex-but-I’m-not-sure-what-we-are-but-will-be-traveling-to-visit-to-see-next-week).  He told me of a company started by some of his friends.  I can’t remember the name but the idea is that you commit a certain amount of money to a personal goal.  Like, $500 to quit smoking – something I highly advise as to all my future European classmates – and you set a deadline.  If you don’t accomplish this goal, your credit card gets charged and you get to donate the money to charity.  I didn’t delve too deeply into it – I imagine the whole thing works (if it does) on the honor system.  In the event that you did not accomplish your goal, your money goes to a good cause.  It’s a little ass backwards that the charity is funded only if you fail.  But it’s a cute idea.  That was the rationale behind buying the ticket – I would purchase the airline ticket and if I didn’t get into INSEAD, I would still quit my job to use the ticket.      

While trying to find available dates on frequent flyer miles, the guy on the other end of the phone offered to come with me, promising delightful company. 

The joke around the old office was that I “give good phone.”  When talking to our company’s vendors or suppliers on the phone, I would inevitably invite some kind of personal digression.  A couple of times I even received gifts along with a product sample I requested – a laser pointer/pen, some candy – small, creepy mementos from lonely sales reps in rural Ohio [read: real America].         

When writing my good-bye e-mail, I still did not know whether I would be attending business school after I returned from my travels.   By then I had had a disappointing interview (only one, whereas everyone I had met had two) with a woman who barely gave me an hour of her time and seemed incredibly bored to be telling me about the “best year of her life.” So I was not feeling very confident that I would get in.  I was also too scared to re-read my application essays that I had written over the course of a week while nursing a 102 degree fever.  

It’s sort of a tradition at our office to write a good-bye e-mail long before you actually leave.  This way, for your last month, you get to be the center of attention as you talk about the exciting next thing you’re doing to everyone who is staying behind working for that jackass client on that project that just won’t end.  As I’ve no doubt established here, I’m a huge attention whore.  (Thus, I’m not feeling confident that I’ll be able to keep this blog anonymous.)  

Somehow, during my absence, the word had gotten around that I was moving to France.  But in the interoffice game of broken telephone, I was now moving to France to go to culinary school.  I was known in the office as a giant gastroslut and thus, culinary school probably went along with that image better than an MBA.

When I came back to correct this notion, people looked almost disappointed.  When I was leaving, jumping into the void, behind the admiration and support of my coworkers, I could see their thinly veiled amusement that I had gone nuts.  Now, MBA seemed like such a normal, rational thing to do even (if I am moving to such an unlikely place to do it).  So, fear not my friends in cubicles, I’m already calculating the earliest I could pay off my loans so that I can quit my life again.  These days, I have an itch to move to Buenas Aires and dance tango all night.

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