brian blackmore

A Chicago MBA on Food Stamps

It didnt take long for my descent from brilliant graduate student with a newly minted MBA from top-tier school University of Chicago to being on the bottom rung of society. Suffice it to say that I ended up alone in my grandmother's house in an exclusive gated community - divorced, my mother died and my grandmother in a nursing home. Sleeping during the day and awake all night - I was in a reverse commute with everyone else in society. I would go out to New York City all night and come back in the subways at 6 am as the go getters were already arriving for their jobs in the city. Those of course were the jobs that I had interviewed for many times over. I imagined a career in advertising, and I had made it to the 3rd or 4th round of interviews in all the big firms - Leo Burnett, DDB Needham, Chiat/Day. But nothing ever clicked right. It was a recession and these desirable jobs were much sought after by everyone. Here I was an ex aerospace engineer trying to break into the hipster world of advertising based on my Chicago career office arranging a few interviews. I relied on those big ticket interviews that everyone was doing, and didn't network enough. You know networking the way career experts suggest that somehow you can like a social butterfly keep contacting all these strangers and keep them interested in your career desires. It's a strange mix of being pushy assertive and self absorbed which I was never good at much to my peril. Once the glamorous company presentations with shrimp cocktails were over, I had no other interviews to fall back on. So there I was alone in a big house with nowhere to go but to waste time and revel in my abandon. All or nothing was my credo. Since I didn't get a job, I would descend into poverty by spending all my money in strip clubs till it ran out. Not the most prudent retirement plan.