Blue Devil Weekend (with addendum)

I can barely stay awake. Functioning on 13 hours of sleep over 3 nights does that to you. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to stay in Durham/Raleigh one extra night to hang out with friends in the area and flew in this morning. Of course I hadn't informed anyone at work that I wouldn't show up till pretty late in the morning. First thing I know when I land, I have 4 voicemails from work, of people trying to track me down!

The weekend was amazing. I got in early Friday morning and since they'd put us up in this swanky hotel with an amazing golf course, I decided to make use of it. After a (frustrating) round of golf, I decided to head out with another admitted student and his wife to check out some apartments that weren't going to be covered in the apartment tour on Sunday. I don't know if it's a NC thing, but I was pretty surprised by the lack of professionalism at all the leasing offices except one.

We had registration at 4, after which we walked over to Fuqua where the various student clubs had set up stalls to talk about what they do and how we could get involved. Met some really interesting people there. Dinner (and my meals for the rest of the trip!) consisted of salad and desert. Ah, the joys of being vegetarian. We wrapped up the day with a night out in Durham at George's on 9th street. Got crazy crowded there in a couple of hours and some people, mostly first years i guess, got pretty wasted (including 1 super hot chick who kept telling me how she was single and how I absolutely had to come to Fuqua since I'm single too). Well, now I have a reason.....
I had a reasonably good time but after a while I got a little bored since the music was really loud and there's only so long I can scream and carry on a conversation with complete strangers. Got back to my room at around 1:30.

The next day was scheduled to begin at 9 AM. ^#*$&^##$)!!! And to make it worse the stupid front desk forgot to call to wake me up (or did I sleep through their call? hmm..). Luckily, someone called me at 8 AM (who calls at 8 AM on a Saturday?!?!) so I managed to barely make it on time. Was a packed day with an academic preview session consisting of two classes (marketing and finance), both of which were excellent, talks on health care managment, entrepreneurship, consulting etc.
..........I really *am* interested in consulting. The cute girl on the consulting panel had *nothing* to do with me going there first and sticking around for 15 minutes after the session was over......

So after a whole bunch of other stuff, it was finally time for the closing party at the Nasher museum. It started off pretty slow with people standing around and chatting, going through the same ritual they'd been practicing the last 2 days. (Hi, I'm XYZ. I'm from ABC. I work in XYZ. I want to do ABC. I'm deciding between XYZ. I'm having a great time. You go.) But as the crowd started streaming in and the alchohol started flowing and people started running into familiar faces and the music got better, the party really picked up. So much so that they didn't stop even after the 1:30 deadline. Everyone headed back to the WaDuke for an afterparty that went on till almost 5.

Sunday consisted of an apartment tour which started at 9 (what's wrong with these people!?) and ended at 1:30. Spent the rest of the day with friends in Raleigh.

A couple of observations. While I had an amazing time, I realized a couple of things. I am going to have to make a conscious effort to network and be a little thick skinned and start up conversations with people. Don't get me wrong. I'm as arrogant and narcissistic as the next guy. I absolutely think I'm one charming b**tard. But lets face it. Barging into a group of 3-4-5 people who are chatting amongst themselves, and trying to pick up a conversation with them has never been something I've enjoyed and that's what you had to do as you tried to meet new people. Women have it slightly easier in this regard since more often than not, guys will approach them to strike up a conversation.

The other thing was, I was amazed by the diversity of the people I met. I met a girl from Japan, another girl from China and a guy from Hungary among others, all of whom had flown in just for the admit weekend and they had some really interesting experiences to share. The sad thing is that almost 80% of the people I personally met had multiple offers from schools incuding Harvard, Kellogg, Wharton, Michigan and LBS and were still undecided about whether they would be at Fuqua in August. It's sad from a purely selfish standpoint as I really liked all these people and would love to have *all* of them as my classmates (which is unlikely, although quite a few said they were leaning towards Duke). That's right folks, I have turned in my deposit. I am now officially a Blue Devil.

Note: I received an email from an Associate Director at the Office of Admissions at Fuqua, who had come across this post and the line about me surviving on salads and deserts, and wanted to apologize for the fact that I could not find something suitable to eat at BDW even though she had made a special effort to ensure that this would not happen and she wanted to know if I had any suggestions. I thought this was a really cool thing to do and is just one more example of the amazing people and culture at Fuqua, where people care about ensuring that everyone feels like part of the team and has an enjoyable experience. For the record, there were indeed vegetarian options other than salad and desert available!