The Perilous and Sinuous Path Possibly Leading to Business School - PART ONE

Most of you who know me well were kindly silent but aghast at my most recent life plan of getting an EXECUTIVE Masters Degree in Business Administration, knowing that I'd walk off the campus nineteen months later in my Nine West pumps with an outrageously overpriced education and no job. Again.

When I sensed confusion, doubt and even horror on many of your parts, I focused on those of you who hid it better and told me it was a great idea. I gave you credit for having seen inside the conflicted soul of an academic artist. For, despite multiple hairpin turns in my life direction (including rest stops at ghostwriting, law and “catering” – wearing a sandwich board in a bikini on the Venice Boardwalk), I also had my days of 98%s (5th grade California Standards Test) and a remarkable aptitude for spelling.

A little background will go a long way. Two years out of my elite liberal arts college, I got my job as a swanky tour guide running bicycle trips in Italy, using almost none of the education I had been gifted. The advice I received was: Be yourself, people do like you, but try to look nice, maybe wear a dress.

Seven years passed, and now a veteran of customer service dependent upon the fickle human condition for my livelihood, I just wanted to live in an old-fashioned system of wrong vs. right, and right = money. I wanted quantifiable aptitude.

I set out to look for schools. They needed to share my contention that if you have a business card, you are a businessperson. Furthermore, this school had to be in San Francisco because I dreamed of being an apprentice at an aikido dojo, a live-in position that requires a paramount commitment of time and energy. Shortly thereafter I discovered the concept of the EMBA because of a flashing banner at the top of a webpage. After reading the following bullet points delineating the features of an EMBA profile versus that of a traditional business degree applicant, it was clear that this was made for me.

• · Typically further along in career, often on track for advancement to senior management. (READ: Now at the advanced stage of hospitality, in which, without a thought, she pulls breakfast buns out of the toaster with a metal fork, there is not much more for her to learn in that regard and the next natural step is hiring and teaching others to do it).
• · Some younger but highly qualified "fast-track" candidates also sponsored by companies. Value "real-time" application – bringing MBA knowledge to current work issues. Seeking new skills and exposure for long-term career goals, (chiefly, not getting sued again) but specific major and internship experience not needed or as highly valued.
• · May be independent professional seeking to add management skills while continuing current professional activities. Prefer schedule that allows for continuing career. Can balance heavy course load in addition to work and family (SUBSTITUTE dojo responsibilities like mopping and tidying shoe rack). Value intense 'immersion' with small but diverse cohort of experienced classmates. Do not want or need high level of non-academic extracurricular options.

I found the two schools in San Francisco that fit the bill: Wharton, perhaps the most famous school of business in the US, and Berkeley-Columbia, a bi-coastal powerhouse. Simply upon reading those names, anyone who knows both them and me probably winced at the improbability of a positive outcome. For example, it is true that I don’t brush my hair often because I think that when it’s clean and flat on my head, I look like a bird. There are probably not too many Wharton alumns with that perspective on personal hygiene.

One minor negative point was that neither school allowed space in their applications for elementary school achievements, which, as noted above, was where I most demonstrated my academic dexterity. After my excellent performance in the regional speech competition with the “Life is a Journey not a destination” topic in 6th grade, I was relegated to being an anxious but only moderately successful overachiever for the rest of my school years. As such, the Graduate Management Admissions Test was going to play a more important role in my application than I would’ve liked, but I would do it and do it good!

Said endeavor endured numerous appellations throughout the experience – Goddamn Motherfucking Asshole Test (coined by one of my references) or Grief Misery And Tragedy, but most suitably as you will come to see was: Gross Misuse of Amanda’s Time.

On the diagnostic test at the front of my big purple study guide, I scored “Poor” on the mathematics part. So the big purple book went with me everywhere. In the supermarket, I would carry it with me in the basket instead of putting it in the locker. At the dojo, I would keep it on the shoe rack facing the mat instead of in the changing room with the rest of my things. When going out for a coffee with a friend, I would bring it to practice in case there was a lull in conversation.

One week before the exam an Argentine friend of mine put me in touch with a friend of his, a Physics teacher who was reputed to have a heart of gold and an uncanny ability to explain math to people who just don’t get it. He became my personal coach for a week and responded to each of my questions with pages of graphs and step-by-step color-coded explanations. So clear and simple that I almost started liking math.

It seemed for a fleeting moment that my (and his) efforts would be rewarded, but after the test, the computer said that my quantitative abilities were quantifiably few, at least in comparison with the thousands of financial analysts and engineers sharing the dream with me. But I was proud that my “verbal” capacity was still intact despite the last four years of speaking in the present tense in Spanish.

The disappointment only set in when at home afterwards, I found that the average score for the last incoming class at these schools was 80 points or 20% higher than mine, though it was noted that there were some exceptions made. And that’s the exact moment in my life when I got tired of always being an exception. I didn’t know if I’d be accepted, but if I were, it would clearly be as the exception. Why couldn’t I just fit in? Why couldn’t I do math?

Well, too late for that, so I insisted to myself that surely programs so esteemed as these would not weigh the score more heavily than my last seven years of tireless service to human kind on vacation, both as a guide and a business owner, as proof that I have been living like a craniopagus twin, sharing my cerebral tissues with my sister Experience. That must be worth more than a number.

A few weeks later, while visiting my best friend in Boston, I spoke with the director of admissions at Wharton, who after skimming my resume and hearing my score, reviewed my transcript and plainly said, “I strongly suggest that you study hard and take the test again, because here at Wharton we do embrace diversity, but we also value success.”

PLEASE CHECK BACK TOMORROW FOR Part Two of "The Perilous and Sinuous Path Possibly Leading to Business School," even if you are among those who already knows what happens. It would mean a lot to me, especially given what happens.