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Coming to — and for — America
I came to the US 25 years ago for my MBA. At the time, I always felt that Canada (and particularly the sleepy hamlet of Toronto that I had grown up in) was too provincial and confining. I wanted to do startup stuff, and get involved in the tech industry, and that meant…America.
But my actual Coming to America was more accidental, and, at least initially, involved much less Sexual Chocolate than the film. I had planned to study a joint business and law degree at a University near my home, and looked forward to climbing the legal ladder, as my family had hoped. My parents, refugees from communist Hungary and Romania wanted us to excel academically and professionally. This was the payback they hoped the universe would deliver for the intellectual careers they had to sacrifice.
The night before the LSAT, I went out to party with friends and got super stoned. When I rolled into the gymnasium for the test, I was still a little buzzed. I scored in the 95th percentile. Scared straight, a few weeks later, I sat for the GMAT — sober — and scored in the 96th percentile. This should have been my first inclination that MBA school was not intellectually rigorous, but I was excited to move my life forward.
One day, a couple of months later, we got one of those little cards in our mailbox that said I had a package down at the Post Office. In the pre-Amazon…
