Okay, this is an even better story about my southern mother giving me hilarious advice on grad school.

When I was applying, I had saved just enough money to take a super intense and expensive GMAT prep course. I was a lowly journalist and the yen had just crashed, so I used airline points to visit one of my best girlfriends who was stationed in Yokohama— sort of a last vacation before a summer of studying for the test.

I was walking down a shopping street in Tokyo and in the window of a store I couldn’t afford was my dream handbag, more than 50 percent off because of the yen collapse, now priced exactly the same as my hardcore GMAT course.

This was forever ago and there was a pay phone outside the store. I was alone and about to make a dumb decision so I called my mother to talk me off the ledge. I explained the situation— dream handbag, exact amount of money in my bank account that I was planning to spend on the course.

In her epic Steel Magnolias drawl, I’ll never forget what she said: “Katie, you’re probably never going to get into that business school. But you will always, always have that handbag.”

Solid advice. Twelve years later, I still wear it all the time.