Haven’t been around much; I decided to take a 22-month vacation someplace sunny. Inspired by this experience, my new favorite topic is business school. Which reminds me: it’s spring, the time when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Round II admission decisions.
If you applied to a top business school recently, either you’ve heard back from your schools or will hear back shortly. For those who didn’t make it: don’t sweat it. The adcoms just saved you roughly a quarter million dollars in cash or loans. Compared to a decent steady job, the NPV of b-school is frequently negative.
For those who did get into a top school: congratulations. Now, statistically speaking, you’re probably a scion of a family of industrial magnates, or a banker’s kid, or at the very least the product of a consultant and an anesthesiologist. If that’s you, you can stop reading right now. This won’t be helpful. Go practice your putts.
Okay. If you’re still reading, you may or may not be thinking, “Oh shit. I’m not excessively privileged. So how do I fake it for business school?” And if you are, I’m here to tell you not to worry. This post’s for you. Yes, you, Mr. 3.9 from a state school. And you, Ms. “My-dad-is-an-English-teacher”. And especially you diversity admits who actually are underprivileged. Both of you.
You now have six months, give or take, to prepare to join your new tribe. Get ready for your crash course. This is not optional. Treat it like part of your application package and just do it.
Things to do the day you get your acceptance letter:
1: Forget your undergrad GPA, your GMAT, and in fact every number related to your past academic performance. You’re in now. Under no circumstances will you ever speak these numbers again.
2: Likewise, forget your bonus number, salary, and any blue-chip names on your resume. Whipping out the name of the bank you used to work at no longer signals status, it signals douchebag.
3: Start underreporting. If something took you three hours, you say you spent an hour on it. Did you spend three months studying for the GMAT? Say four days. This is excellent practice for business school, where too much effort will make you stand out. And not in a good way.
4: Start coasting. If your family’s not rich, I know you only got to this point through hard work and sacrifice. But the members of your new tribe don’t want to hear about it. You can talk about your vacations, you can talk about your hangovers, but you will never talk about your all-nighters.
Phase I: March-April
5: Start working on your tolerance. If you’re female, your goal is six drinks per night with no significant hangover. If male, you’re looking at nine. If you don’t drink: start immediately. If you’re Mormon or Muslim, your god will understand; there is a special pass for business school. (I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve heard it from several individuals of each faith.)
6: Buy a bag of red plastic Solo cups. You know what to do with these. Your goal is one and done in 9 out of 10 trials.
7: Leave work. It’s awkward enough already.
That’s all for today. Tomorrow: the nine things to do in the months after leaving work. And if you’re ethnically diverse, if you’re a New Yorker, or if you went to Harvard undergrad, some special rules will apply.
Off to a good start. Looking forward to future installments.
Good question. I'll include a pic for you with tomorrow's post and you can tell me.
lol... forget eHarmony I found my lifemate on WSO ... Patrick new revenue stream!!!!
alcohol never solved any of my problems :(
Wow... Good and concise points.. Wonder how am i going to be an alcohol expert in such a short while....
So I'm assuming this is the new contributor. Not bad. A bit of a Dealbreaker style to it.
Yea - it's hard when your boss wrote your recos and knows you're in and leaving in a few months... things didn't get awkward until I gave him official word that I had accepted to my school.
[quote=bankerella]Haven’t been around much; I decided to take a 22-month vacation someplace sunny.
me too- on the 22 month vacation, but mine's to a shithole south of NYC
You don't think it's always sunny there?
A ha!
Funny- I'm coming from where it really is sunny, LA-- ironically where it actually takes place, lol
Great post as usual from bankerella.
My tolerance is something I worry about immensely. I actually don't like drinking, and on a given night 2-3 beers or 2 hard liquor is more than enough for me.
Brief tangent. Some people pray every day; some meditate. What I do to commune with the Divine is drink: not hard, but steadily. Two drinks every day, like clockwork. You could set your watch by me. I truly, deeply love drinking. (Yes, I know the slew of stereotypes applied to women who truly enjoy real alcohol. I just don't give a shit.)
When I was in b-school, my levels of love and commitment for the essential act of drinking vastly outweighed that of most of my classmates. I cared about whether I was tasting sherry cask or new American toasted-head barrels. I listened to what the booze had to tell me. I cared. I grooved with it. Unlike most of the rest of humanity, I loved the creosote-scented phenols that waft off a glass of straight anejo mescal left out at room temperature.
So did I love drinking in b-school?
No. I absolutely fucking hated it.
For one thing ,the bars people went to served piss and called it drink. Yes, I did force down the column-distilled industrial waste dressed up as $2.50 happy hour specials. But unfortunately, 3-4 drinks a night is my maximum level of sane and rational drinking as well.
It's not that I'm a pussy, it's just that some people's livers physically can't detoxify our bloodstreams fast enough. Mine can't. I just have to live with that.
It was a huge liability. It was very hard to get certain people to understand that by refusing to do shots with them, I wasn't dissing them but trying to keep a case of mild alcohol poisoning from turning into something requiring a trip to the hospital. So people ended up thinking, "Bankerella doesn't really drink or party," when the fact is that I do... just not the same way they do.
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