Hi guys,

I was hoping to get your insights on how I might best address my early career in business school applications. It makes for good conversation at cocktail parties, but looks awkward jammed into checkable boxes.

After graduation, I spent a year on a prestigious teaching fellowship in China's rust belt. The experience was ludicrous. In addition to my official position teaching history at a university, I scored (completely undeserved) modeling gigs, provided legal advice on American patents, and toured the countryside as a semi-professional basketball player (we were paid mostly in rice wine). At the end of year, I sent out some stories, and found an agent who asked me to turn my experience into a book.

I spent the next year writing and peddling the thing. (In that time - about 5 months after I came back - I was offered a job promoting Broadway Tours in China. However, the company's China launch kept being pushed back until finally the board of directors canceled the China initiative.)

At year's end, I finally sold the rights of the book to a publisher in China. Thanks to copies of the manuscript floating around, I was also offered a stringer position at a famous business magazine. For the next two years, I worked as a journalist primarily for that magazine, but also contributing regularly to other publications (most of which you would be familiar with).

In late 2007, I started a company (inspired by features I had written on the sector). I have since built it from a fledgling startup into a profitable venture (recently valued at 10 million dollars) with operations in 15 cities in China.

That's the background - here are my questions....

1) How do I even enter my early experience into the online applications? My work as a journalist was most definitely full time. I worked long hours and made a full time journalist's living (nothing to brag about). That said, it would be incorrect to list any of my publications (even the primary one) as a full-time job in the traditional sense.

2) How much should I mention/explain this early work, if at all? I absolutely loved Journalism and learned a great deal from it. Although the path may seem non-linear, it was also instrumental in preparing me for entrepreneurship (a fact, I am sure, is not obvious at first glance). That said, my career goals and reasons for pursuing an MBA are much more closely related to my current position. I am not at a loss for entrepreneurship stories, and these tie more neatly in to the most common essay themes (leadership, team-building, etc). I don't want to ignore the early years, especially if it might spook or confuse the adcom, but I am hesitant to use an entire essay on older stories, less relevant stories.


Thanks for all your great work on this forum. Don't know what I'd do without you.