Guest Post :: ‘lifestyle’ over ‘life’, ‘prospects’ over ‘love’

3 weeks out and the Insead IT hacks have finally managed to kick every single D09ner out of the MBA intranet portal. Begging was useless; when your turn came it was like getting fired in the worst way:

“Your mbaconnect account has been deactivated. However, you still have access to Careerlink.”

Ah, Careerlink. Ye ol’ faithful job search portal, thin with age, at least until the J10s’ recruitment round begins.

At Insead, 15 seconds really is 15 seconds. You are hot for a year. Cloistered by the forest, coddled by the MBA administration, courted by companies big and small, you feel the world better watch out when you walk outta there with your diploma. Right?

Wrong.

All the cheers and whistles crescendo into nothing but a sigh for those of us unlucky or inept enough not to have landed a plum position in P4. When the curtain falls, you realize you were not on stage but in the audience and it is time to haul your unemployed self out into the blinding sun. The stress of this period is not like the constant stress of time management we experienced during the MBA. It is more insidious, an uncomfortable tingly feeling deep in our gut.

For those, comme moi, who formed romantic attachments with classmates, the weeks before and after graduation are even more fraught with soul-searching. My vision is clouded by all the question marks hanging in the air and still, like any MBA worth her salt, I am cobbling together a new job search strategy, calling up alums and sucking up to old associates and colleagues over lunches that I cannot afford. Meanwhile, my boyfriend has just expanded his geographic criteria to include North America. That means, his job search, like a gap year adventure, could see him alight anywhere from Singapore, overland through the Middle East to Western Europe and across the Atlantic to Canada. What of “us”? Dunno. Get a job first.

By now, I am familiar with the trade-offs that are de rigueur in this phase of life. So many classmates delivered last kisses to perfectly wonderful boys and girls to pursue – not their dream jobs – sensible career choices in livable office locations. The need to make good on our expensive degrees drives us to deny the choices that bloom deep within from true, pithy desire. Except for a brave few, we pick ‘lifestyle’ over ‘life’, ‘prospects’ over ‘love’.

But that is not to say that we aren’t savoring the final days of freedom before the suits and peak hour traffic take them away. The stragglers coming back to town to take up new positions or find some are keeping the INSEAD theme alive. My inbox is filled with invitations to dim sum, karaoke, Attica, water treatment plants, frog farms. Yes, we’re an energetic bunch. A special type of animal. Ever hopeful, ever ready, we emerge from behind our laptops at twilight to gather at the watering hole. Twirling beers on garden furniture, we talk about business, love, the future. Hope is alive. The world is at our feet once again.

Guest post :: Wishing you Fantastic Times

“At 6 months, people will change jobs, at 1 year, babies start popping out and at 1.5 years divorces start to happen” –Anonymous INSEAD alumnus

If that quote is true, then god knows what’s going to happen at 2, 5, and 10 years. Why it would take you 1.5 years to work out that the sweaty guy you face licked that one momentous Montmelian night is not for you I have no idea.

I had an elderly alumnus inform me that his year “had the highest death rate of any year”. Er, okay, so how is that local sports team doing again? While definitely hoping my year doesn’t come anywhere near that infamous record, it is interesting to note how the partying refuses to die. Put two INSEADers in a room and they will find some way to make a party out of it. And you definitely feel the obligation to go and see everyone “just one last time”.

It’s good to feel that obligation; it means you have found at least some heart during the year and still want to chase it, to make it stay and experience it all over again. People talk about wanting the year to stop, to slow down and reverse. But seriously, do you honestly have the energy to do another year at that intensity? I know I do not, and while I am sad to leave great friends and experiences, I am looking forward to the next chapter in the story of my life.

The INSEAD goodbye seems to be fairly drawn out. There are the hugs, the kisses, the promises to see each other all over the world again, some even sacrificing a great deal to be with partners they only met this year. Then there’s the awkward seeing them again downstairs on the way to school/supermarket/Uncle’s uh, didn’t I just say a long, heartfelt, drawn out goodbye to you? Well, er, see ya!!!

So where will we all end up? Some are exhausted and never want to travel ever again. Some still have the energy left for that one last big push. Others have a 15 country round the world trip in 10 days planned. Me? I just want a good cup of tea and a lie down.

It is noticeable how few people found their “dream job”. Some have managed to change 2 of the 3 infamous axes (function, geography and industry). Others have said screw you all, I’m going home (and then looking for work next year). And yet others have only managed to change 1 one of the axes. It seems very few managed that big leap after the MBA, which is apparent only really possible maybe 2-3 years out of the course.

So, this is the end. Although with INSEAD, it never really ends, it just never dies. And that, truly, is a good thing in this world.

For those who knew me, I wish you fantastic times in whatever you do.

May You Live in Interesting Times

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character is stuck reliving the same day over and over again until he finally evolves into a better human being, gets the girl, and is able to move forward through time again. The last month of INSEAD has felt like one long Groundhog Day. Everyday for the last month has been a repeat of the one before it. A never-ending LAST party, the LAST of the house dinners, the LAST lunch at uncle’s. The LAST band performance by The Bottlenecks or The Sexecutives. The LAST case. The LAST lecture (I chose to attend dreamy, brilliant Kevin Kaiser’s Value Creation in Corporate Restructuring and skip the final day of the excruciatingly boring From Startup to Fortune 500.)

The Groundhog Day feeling was especially acute in Sri Lanka. Was it even Sri Lanka? Grad trip could have been at any random hotel in a tropical location and none of us would have noticed the difference. There was an elephant and some monitor lizards involved, so could be…

For those of you who missed it, and want to live vicariously through me, here are the highlights:

Day 1:
Take cab to airport at 4:30AM. Take scary, scary airplane (hairy-backed flight attendants in saris very stingy about blankets).
Take 3.5 hour bus ride past 500 buddha statues to gated community.
By the time you arrive, you have been traveling for 13 hours.
Life skills class 1. Turns out that your roommate has been taking striptease/pole-dancing classes for four years. She’s now eager to impart her knowledge onto her classmates.
Stuff face at dinner. Pumpkin curries, beetroot curries, okra curries. Life is good.
Day 2:
Stuff face at breakfast. New favorite – hoppers – will one day feature in a brunch-off.
Water aerobics proves way more fun than expected. Spend rest of the day meandering from big pool to little pool.
Put on some SPF40
Volleyball.
Sit down briefly and pretend to read Harpers. Realize that there aren’t enough tables and exhibits for it to make sense to you.
Drink some caipiroskas. NB: Pacing yourself to prevent hangover from cheap local alcohol is a good idea.
Dodge locals hanging around on beach trying to sell you stuff.
Avoiding eye contact with two classmates you no longer speak to is somehow highly satisfying.
Jump in the waves, laughing hysterically.
More volleyball.
Life skills class 2: learning to unlock the movement that lives naturally inside of you.
Dinner is delish. You’re glad that your stomach hasn’t worked since eating something dodgy in Cambodia, allowing you to go for seconds as long as you stay close to the toilet. Also limits your ability to go on various excursions to elephant orphanages. (Yep, oversharing again).
Bad decisions at midnight are pre-empted by sand flies on beach. File snogging with someone with a poor grasp of colloquial English under ‘cultural exchange’.
Day 3:
Water aerobics. Less fun the second time around.
Volleyball.
Stuff face at lunch
Meander from big pool to little pool. Following several dislocated shoulders and a near-scalping, body surfing in the waves seems a lot less appealing.
Volleyball.
Discover your latent talent as a football quarterback.
Yoga at sunset.
Life skills class 3. Need a long cold shower afterwards.
Take cold shower. Cold shower doesn’t help.
Day 4:
Same same
Take tuk-tuk and overpay for bad, greasy massage in town. Went just to say I left the gated community.
Life skills class 4. Learn chair dancing
Celebrate our love of conformity while wearing all white and doing a coordinated dance on the beach. Realize that I’m not drunk enough to have the proper amount of fun at this party.
Have the same ‘what are you doing afterwards’ conversation for the 97th time in 5 days, followed by the ‘are you happy or sad to be done conversation’
Day 5:
Same same
Some tearful good-byes. Pretend that you’ll see people much sooner than you’ll see them.
Life skills class 5. You think that if you can learn the art of hip-rotations you’ll never be rejected again.
Take 1AM bus back to Colombo. Foot massage at airport ranks high among best decisions ever. Board scary plane at 7AM. The pilot comes on the PR welcoming the class of INSEAD 09 on board. It’s sweet.
Arrive to Singapore exhausted, in need of another vacation.

While I didn’t get the girl, it seems that I finally stand some hope of moving forward in time.

I’m now an alumna of INSEAD. A very anti-climactic ceremony – a sweaty and awkward speech from Jake, a slightly more inspiring if not altogether well-reasoned speech from Dean Brown, an an incomprehensible and largely uninspiring address from the Asia-Pacific president of Diaggio, a spirits company – followed by a cocktail mixer, a really bad buffet dinner and a ride in the flyer to watch the cranes dotting the Singapore night sky – marked the end of this remarkable year.

Oh, right, forgot to mention: I’m in Singapore. With two weeks left of term, I abandoned the Fontainebleau ship as temperatures plunged below zero. The resort life in Singapore is okay…. a 2, 3. Sterile and soul-less, as expected; but also, delicious, convenient, more intimate and more relaxed. The INSEAD brand looks the same, but the whole campus feels and looks completely different. It’s some Hello Kitty fantasy version of The Business School for the World: tropical plants, lily ponds, and a food court with bubble tea and dragon fruit just down the street at Fusionopolis.

I have no regrets about not spending a term in Singapore; rather, I appreciate the symbolic continuity of a full year spent in one place. Now, I can encapsulate my experience as ‘back when I was young and spent a year in France’ and maybe even pretend that I spoke French but have forgotten it since. Pourquoi pas?

If I do have any regrets, it’s not coming back for graduation in Fonty. It snowed in Fonty this morning, which gives a nice circularity to the experience. Snow when we started; snow when we finished.

Sad or Happy? My answer, in case you are wondering, is both.

I know I’m going to miss this place – or if I’m honest, the concept of INSEAD more than INSEAD itself; I’ll miss myself at this time in my life. Just the way I miss myself at 18, moving to a big city on my own for the first time. Or at 25, taking pictures of everything I ate and seeking out films that made me bawl. At 28, finding the guts to quit my job, and heading to learn Spanish and dance salsa in a rainy town of a thousand hummingbirds. I’ll miss the uncertainty of this year, the possibilities ahead, the camaraderie of the shared experience, the structured environment which makes you feel like you’re succeeding in a way that’s irrelevant to the rest of the world, the inexhaustible amount of energy I summoned this year.

At this point, I’ve been saying good-bye to people for about three weeks. First, a round of Fonty good-byes, next a round of adieus in Sri Lanka and now a string of drawn out au revoirs by the poolside at Heritage, as people desert this ghost town one by one.

Eventually I’ll say good-bye to this blog as well. I’ll check in a few months hence, as I hope to have some post-INSEAD perspective. Until then, a bientot, hasta pronto, bis spaeter, до встречи.

Batshit Crazy

There are four weeks left of term and some people have lost their minds. Some are inventing their own version of two-campus P5 that I’ve heard called “Fontainepour” (or “Singableau”), others are finding a lifetime of McNuggets a viable proposition. I’m trying to balance the sentimentality of the impending departure (the last of the Monday dinners, the parties with Black Eyed Peas on constant repeat, the foggy mornings in the forest) with the urge to get the f*ck out of Dodge. And all the while, trying not embarrass myself too much at parties. [To the sweaty aggressive Israeli P2: check your pockets for any of my personal items and pls leave in pigeonhole. Facebook stalking revealed that you listed 'The DaVinci Code' and Vivaldi as favorites, so um... it's not going to work out. It's not me, it's you.]

As of today, I have ten days left in France. Having also gone somewhat batshit crazy, I decided that I couldn’t finish INSEAD without doing the Singapore thing. So I’m in the process of packing and taking stock of the year that is almost done. Of course, it’s impossible to see the forest for the trees while I’m still thick in the trees. My talent manager says that we won’t truly understand the impact of this year until it’s over. So, you’ll have to wait for me to make my final assessments a few months out over a glass of Txakoli while I watch the surf from a beachside cafe in rainy, beautiful Pays Vasco.

Just last night I was going through my coursepacks – deciding what to keep, what to scan, what to throw away. With La Poste’s 10EUR/kilo rate, I have to part with the 3 ft tall stack of course notes, readings, cases. After college, I held on to the 20+ ‘Bibles’ – bound books of all the course notes, homeworks, exams. I lugged the 15 kilos of them from apartment to apartment, and in the 6 years since undergrad looked at one of the Bibles once, to review Navier-Stokes when doing some fluid flow calculations at work. Eventually I ditched them in the basement of the house I shared with the Troll.

At INSEAD, you have to continuously make tradeoffs between studying, your social life, sleep, keeping in touch with family and friends from home, and blogging. During this massive house-cleaning, I got into a low panic over the fact that most of the trading off I’ve been doing recently has been in favor of the part-time job (which, to be fair, has been a great learning experience) and social life, at the expense of sleep and academic learning. This means that I have piles and piles of seemingly interesting supplemental reading – on leadership, corporate governance, making of strategy, whathaveyou – that I haven’t had time to read. I’m deluding myself thinking that I’ll read them one day if I scan them in.

Post INSEAD I’m joining a small start-up to help them set strategic direction for their product development. [It's exactly what I wanted to be doing, so I feel incredibly lucky that things have worked out my way] Yet, sitting in on Value Creation in Corporate Restructuring (and shamelessly drooling over Kevin Kaiser) is making me feel like I don’t know squat. I’ve resorted to listening closely to comments people making during the class, and mentally placing people into one of several buckets: “would never hire”, “should consider hiring”, “will ask to be on the board in 15 years” .

[I'm bored. So, to be continued.]

Grad Trip Prediction Market

Per MDMS leave me a comment with your own predictions for our grad trip!

You didn’t come to Europe to eat at McDonald’s

[Mama, Papa, I know you're going to read this. And then you're going to wish you hadn't. Up to you]

Good news! I have another dating disaster story to add to my already colorful and highly amusing repertoire of drama and intrigue – the retellings of which frequently derailed attempts at productivity of many a study group. Take for example one uber-kinky John I asked out on a date by taking a picture of my stuffed panda holding a note inviting him to see Rach4 at the Symphony. It was the world’s most adorable start to a relationship that would end when he finally decided to tell me that he was married. I was shocked briefly, but soon found a third half-Asian named Jon (to replace the half-Asian that John was replacing), and was relieved not to listen to his condescending soliloquies on post-modernism any longer. There was many a JDate disaster story: a guy with a pronounced limp who insisted on playing a rather comical game of tennis as a first date (as if to prove that, like Pinnocchio, he was a real boy), a guy who took me to see Dar Williams in concert the week after his mother died, and another whose mother killed herself a few months prior. There was Difficult Dan who was an amazing gourmet cook, and a talented pianist and cellist, and completely OCD and unbearable. There was also Gosha who got dumped for obnoxiously peeking into my fridge the first time he came to my house. And Caleb who failed to get a third date when he took a 5 minute phone call between the entree and the plat. And many a story too vulgar to tell. And then there’s the story of Jon the Pervert that’s a party favorite, but casts me in a rather psychotic light.

Jon the Pervert (not half-Asian for variety) was a classmate in grad school. I had a suspicion that Jon was a complete asshole, as evidenced by the fact that his “friends” didn’t seem to like him very much, and the fact that all of my friends couldn’t stand him. But he was very good looking, and our parents happened to live two towns over. So I talked myself into falling for him. As I probably mentioned previously, Jon the Pervert spent about 6 months destroying my self-esteem in a particularly manipulative, awful way, and then dumped me two weeks before graduation.

He then promptly got back together with an ex-girlfriend who was a Russki me-lookalike named Sasha and much more in touch with her lesbian side. The reason I know this is because I hacked Jon’s yahoo account.

Six months later, and a while after I stopped speaking to Jon and stopped reading his e-mail, I was bored and decided to check in. Just to make sure that he was still unhappy, I suppose. What I found in his inbox, among love letters to his girlfriend, was a response to an online ad to a girl who promised to ‘Fuck the smartest man on Craigslist’. Jon decided to throw his hat into the game, writing her from another account called craigslistcas@yahoo.com and cc’ing his regular account for whatever strange reason. Craigslist Casanova’s account happened to have the exact same lame password as his other account, and what I found was a treasure trove of years’ worth of e-mails to that tune.

Eventually I beat Jon at his own twisted game, inflicting a wealth of highly-satisfying emotional damage along the way. Last time I ran into Jon, 3 years hence, he was a shell of his former self. Actually, he was fine and getting married to a girl that one of my friends described as “not particularly bright, but very nice”.

In comparison, the latest turn of events is kind of plain vanilla: low on both drama and amusement, and highly unmemorable. What sucks is that I didn’t expect to be treated this way by someone I considered a friend – someone I was there for when he needed me. Perhaps I should choose my friends more carefully.

In the comforting words of my absentee talent manager, “Princesa, you did not come to Europe to eat McNuggets.”

Perhaps I’ll try something a little more gourmet next.

The good news is that my friends are always eager to help. Here, for example, is a chat excerpt from my upstairs neighbor:

“What style do you like next?
an East Coast intellectual?
a French alcoholic?
a constipated Swiss?
a sloppy Brit?
an Aussie with an indecipherable accent?
something of the Asian persuasion again?
Tomorrow at Le Shaker, we can hold auditions.”

The harder-edged intensity of experience

Maybe we mistakenly think we want “happiness,” which we tend to picture in very vague, soft-focus terms, when what we really crave is the harder-edged intensity of experience. -Tim Kreider, Averted Vision, New York Times

This blog has become too public. When Akis comes into GSM lecture screaming, “Haaaay, I heard you have a blog. Is it about me?” or Carl messages me to say, “I may have drunkenly mentioned your blog to 4-5 people last weekend. Sorry…” you have to admit that most of the school knows who’s being way too revealing on the internet. So along with the anonymity, I’ve lost the desire to share creatively-but-thinly-disguised details of my private life. So, GP, you were right: I guess wasn’t writing for attention.

But I’ll try to keep it alive for a few more weeks. Eventually, I’ll be glad I did, right?

::

“When you graduate in a couple of weeks,” said the GSM prof matter-of-factly, “you will…”

I failed to hear the rest of that phrase because I was too stunned. Right, in some four weeks we’ll be done with classes. We will have our last-chance sloppy-seconds hookup-with-everyone-you’ve-failed-to-hook-up-with-by-now orgy on the beach somewhere (I think it might be somewhere in Sri Lanka, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?) and then we’ll be called MBAs. And I’ll go back to the country where most people outside of consulting have never heard of INSEAD, and possibly to a state where my undergraduate connections will carry more weight than my INSEAD ones.

So, I feel like I should be able to summarize some key takeaways. Make some grand, far-reaching conclusions about the year that has almost passed. Perhaps, reflect philosophically about what I’ve learned and the opportunities before me. Or, I should reflect on the ways I’ve changed (err… regressed). But I’ll leave that to my guest blogger (who also does a poor job of disguising himself).

But really, it hurts my head to think about it. Instead, I just want to run away. I’m done with the hard-edged intensity of experience, with the French inability to think creatively, with the out-of-reach Korean food, and the punk ass kids who steal dirty sneakers from people’s cars.

I’m also done with the costume parties and the merciless gossip and the small talk that rarely transcends the quotidian or the sexual innuendo. And I’m done with letting the men here disrespect me.

I’ll admit that I’m withdrawing from relationships and the bonding to eventually make it easier on myself to leave. I’m not better than anyone here; I’m just not good at faking enthusiasm.

It’s 3AM and I’m just in a piss-poor mood. In another three weeks, I’ll write a more chipper post.

Train to Munich

[this story is a bit anachronistic, but still good]

I don’t know why I thought taking the train to Munich for Oktoberfest was going to be boring. I brought some readings on Telecom ecosystems, a book I’ve been dog-earing one page at a time since August, and figured I’d read for four hours, then get a good 8 hours of sleep. I used to love taking trains as a child in the mother country; I loved falling asleep to the lulling beating of the wheels on the tracks. Since then, the trains have gotten smoother, and the rhythmic sound has virtually gone away. I was disappointed to find this out the last time I took an overnight train (Granada to Madrid in 2001). Regardless, I was excited for a good night’s sleep and some me-time.

Needless to say, I must have been delusional. The Oktoberfest train is sold out. The chick on the bunk next to me has 2″ long fake eyelashes, and 2″ long nails. Her name is Believe. She doesn’t seem like a typical Octoberfest goer, but maybe business is better in Munich over the weekend.

So, I’m talking to some guys from California and some French dudes. And we’re all drinking Pastis. Or rather, I’m holding my Pastis as far away from my nose as possible, lest the smell makes me throw up. The Cali kids have just graduated from college and are doing some poorly-coordinated trip around the world. As we talk, I realize that they think that I’m still in college, and one of the 21-year-olds might be hitting on me. I feel the need to set the record straight.

Me: “I’m older than I look”

Him: “Oh, how old are you?”

Me: “I’m 30″

I don’t know what possesses me to lie about my age (especially in the wrong direction).

Him: “Damn! Well… um… young at heart! Cheers!”

We clink our plastic cups.

Guest Post #?? :: From Singapore and from the Heart

[the views in this post do not reflect the views of MBA/MRS. In fact, she had to look up who Tyler Durden was]

“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. ” – Tyler Durden

P5 makes me think of that quote. At INSEAD you are told you are the “Leader of Tomorrow”, a “Global Leader” who can make a difference. While this is all admirable as the countdown begins to unemployment for many, you finally realise you really are just like every schmoe in the world, out in the world hustling to make a buck.

Okay, an overeducated, probably far wealthier schmoe, but you’re still hustling to make a buck.

You start to see why there is that statistic that 50% of all INSEAD graduates or something start their own business 2-3 years out. When you are told to go forth and conquer, and end up conquering naught but a middle level management position, I think most people assess their goals in life.

But then P5 shouldn’t just be about a job should it? It should also be about the memories, and making the most of people you will probably never see again except at reunions. So as always there is the partying, and the partying, and oh yes, the partying.

But you do find people of heart here, actually, you can find heart anywhere you go. It’s always there, lurking beneath whatever barriers that people have put up to deny it, and I hope YOU truly believe that. Because if you do not, well then, no one has heart on this planet then, do they?

No, while MBAMrs has taken a hiatus, we can pick up the slack. And we can tell you, yes Singapore IS more inclusive than Fonty, for what reasons we know not. Perhaps it is the city, perhaps it is living in communal housing that still responds to accountability. No, the meek, the poor, the tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, even they are included here.

That is not to say this is a paradise, far from it. I mean for one, there are no baguettes. Or cheese. Of any description.

Look, I will end here. Because the best thing to say at the end of P5 is nothing. And you know why? Because either 1) you have already said it or 2) because well, everyone knows what you are going to say anyway.

And really, to be in that situation, is not a bad state of affairs at all.

A Thing Like That

I’m temped to start this post off with an excuse about why I haven’t written. But I won’t.

P4 is done, and it’s just a little bit heart-breaking. I started the term off thinking I couldn’t wait to be done with this summer camp nonsense. But then I dug out my mini skirt, tied my hair up in pig tails and got back into the spirit with the back-to-school party at Fleuri.

The rest of the term was kind of a blur. If I recall correctly, there was fabulous babaganoush and belly dancing and shisha. There were some crappy dress-up parties with a shit DJ at Villecerf. There was many a late night involving Mad Men and a few too many random Tuesdays at Houston’s where around 11PM talk would turn to driving to Paris – just because. But then we never did because I was usually wearing ugly shoes. That, and I’m pretty lame. There was the most wonderfully delicious dinner in Barbizon with the most awkward company. There was a brand project involving pants. There was an incredible harvest of chestnuts that I hauled home by the dozen like I did as a kid. And an REP team that still hasn’t started the project. And a PIM class I could have done without; the psych 101 bullshit presented in a confrontational manner was a waste of time given the years I spent exploring all my highly-endearing dysfunctions with a therapist. There were many a daytrip to Paris, and last minute incredible audible involving Munich (roasted chesnuts, a glockenspiel, and way too much beer and serious boob envy) and a trip beyond the iron curtain, where each turn around a corner stirred up some distant memory of my childhood in the mother country.

For most of September, the only time I saw my friends was when I was being asked to proof-read obsequious cover letters to Bain and McKinsey. Some of these friends are finally re-emerging dinged and dejected, with some harsh words about their uber-smooth interviewers and with an exciting task ahead: thinking about what amazing, inspiring thing they will do instead of consulting.

Saying no to consulting was a character-building thing. I might even say I’m proud that I stayed away. Actually, I almost slipped. With three hours to go before the McKinsey deadline, I decided to throw my hat into the game. In 20 minutes, I banged out a pretty convincing cover letter containing the proper level of idolizing platitudes, displaying a smug self-awareness, and claims for a deep love of ‘impact’. Another 20 minutes after that, I decided that I didn’t need any more rejection in my life, deleted the letter and jumped into bed with a book – AJ Jacob’s “Know It All” in which he hilariously recounts the year he spent reading the Encyclopaedia Brittanica from A to Z.

I supposed I’d be freaking out more right now, if I didn’t have a job. Instead, I’m semi-employed. I took on the project with a clean energy company that I mentioned in a prior post – which is keeping me insanely busy, highly inspired and more or less solvent until the end of February, at which point I’m hoping this small startup decides that I’m indispensible and extends my contract. The coolest thing about the work I’ve been doing is realizing how directly I’ve been able to apply the learnings of Industry Competitive Analysis, Brand Management and Strategy. I guess I’ve learned something in the last few months, after all. Speaking of… I should probably get back to doing some customer segmentation work.