Reboot, reinvent, recycle

I reckon it was a day like today, more than five years ago, when I said enough is enough, I can't take it anymore. I was working in strategic marketing consulting, which sounds great but really just means you're a slave in a suit jacket. I hated my boss (a profoundly bipolar and insecure guy whose rapid ascent made him more unstable than a bottle of nitroglycerine), I hated my colleague at the time (the most bitter, idiotic, yet conceited woman I've ever met in my life), and I hated my lifestyle, if you can call working from 9 AM to 11 PM (minimum) and being intimately acquainted with anxiety a lifestyle. I was paid peanuts, true, but the day I calculated my total salary divided by total hours worked and found out I was earning less per hour than the cleaning lady at home, something surely clicked in my brain.

Though in reality, I don't think it was even that; it was probably returning from Christmas holidays terribly sad and realizing I was going back to the same gray rat-infested hole as the year before, that nothing was going to change no matter how much hope I had for the next project, that I wasn't even happy spending the money I earned because I didn't have the freedom to do so, and that really, nothing was going to change if I didn't do something, but what? That's how things were when one January afternoon at Café Libertad, a friend told me she was going to do a master's degree in luxury business management at the Instituto de Empresa. Suddenly everything clicked in my head; I said, I want to do that too, and in less than two weeks, I became her master's classmate.

I'm also not going to tell you that studying that master's gave me the vital clairvoyance I needed; in fact, from that moment until setting up La Condesa, life took many, many turns, but I was happy studying it and it was certainly the trigger for a change for the better, much better. Afterward, I worked with bosses who were not only not bipolar but just as intelligent or more so than those in consulting, and on top of that, they lacked any psychotic streak (Julio, you're the best), friendly co-workers, and a life with normal hours that allowed me to indulge in something very necessary in this life called...hobbies. But I'll tell you about that another day; today I'll leave you with a lot of information that might be useful if you're looking for a vital change.

For those in 4th year of ESO or 1st year of Bachillerato (high school), these scholarships are available to study the International Baccalaureate in the United World Colleges network. You only have until February 2nd to complete the application, so get a move on. I received one many years ago, so I can tell you that yes, it is real, reliable, and I would need an entire separate blog to explain the life-changing impact it had.

The one I mentioned earlier that helped me retrain from a burnt-out consultant to a happy student. It starts on February 3rd so again...get a move on, my friends.