Axolotl: Chick-Fil-A and an MBA

May 15, 2013 :: Admissionado Team

So I’m traveling for work, sitting in a hotel room, in my underpants, eating two Chick-Fil-A sandwiches – one spicy, one not – both with honey mustard (yeah, you jealous) when my phone reminds me I have to get on Skype with Kyn. Kyn! The consultant! The whole reason I’m here! (Other than the whole bschool thing). I haven’t even e-stalked the guy yet, but I vaguely remember something about gaming from his bio.

So we get on Skype (I put some clothes on first), he from Delhi, I from a motel somewhere godforsaken in middle America, and commence discussion.

Rapid reaction:

• This guy is awesome. More on that in a bit.
• This guy knows what he’s talking about
• I have a lot of work to do

We never got a chance to explore further since we had a lot of ground to cover, but Kyn is really into games. Like, built-an-arcade-cabinet-business-with-a-friend into games. Gotta ask him more on that later. More than that, he’s got a great sense of the formula and structure of b-school apps, and immediately points out where he thinks my app needs work, which happen to be the same areas I have some apprehension: extracurriculars, leadership, and – oh yeah – what I want to do with the rest of my life.

As more and more doors have opened for me in my career, it’s been harder and harder to nail down one good story. It’s easy to see myself doing many things, and in fact that will likely be the case. But Kyn’s wisdom here was enlightening, and his (very approximate) quote has stuck with me: bschools want to know that you can plan out the rest of your entire life to a T. And so my homework is to treat my future with some degree of rigor.

The other two areas are a little easier to wrap my head around: taking leadership both at work and out of work. Kyn says there’s plenty of experience to work with but not a great go-to crown jewel story. We need to flesh out how I’ve helped lead an organization rather than just being part of one. I’ve had an incredible time being a mentor, a tutor, a consultant, and an investor, but I haven’t yet taken the reins in any one place.

Wiping fried chicken bits off my face I pencil in our next appointment. My mind’s been set off and the gears are creaking away.

Axoltol (not his real name, folks) will be blogging about his application journey from start to acceptance. Follow along here.