Jane Galt, dominatrix?

The Blogosphere's favorite MBA could easily have turned out differently:

"It's about having a good sense of humor, no matter what the situation," said Sandi Longhurst, 28, the Arizona State MBA who became a dominatrix for nine months.

Longhurst graduated from ASU in the spring of 2001 and was set to begin her job as a business and systems analyst that July. But before she started, the company went south, laying off numerous employees and pulling offers it had handed out. Longhurst's was among them.

So she moved to New York, enrolled in bartending school and hit the pavement interviewing. When that proved fruitless, she tried something … different.

"I started joking around that I would become a stripper," said Longhurst, who now lives in Salt Lake City and works for a radio station in sales and marketing. "Instead, I became a dominatrix. I thought it would be really funny. I figured, I'll just do the trashy adult industry."

She worked at a place called the Dungeon, making $80 to $210 an hour plus tips helping people live out their fetishes and S&M fantasies – though there was no sex involved and it was more theatrics and dirty talk than anything else, she said.

"That was my post-MBA experience," she said. "It was actually a lot of fun."

If Ms. Longhurst considered blogging or the Foreign Service, apparently she wasn't prepared to tell us.