Category: Fuqua Friday: Enjoy a beverage (or two!) and network with your classmates
Fuqua Friday. A fantastic tradition where the Daytime MBA class gets together each week on Friday to have a few adult beverages and some hors d’oeuvres. What better way to end the week than to have some quality networking time with your classmates and Fuqua staff, before everyone breaks off for their weekend plans. I’ve always found this to be a great tradition (the University of Delaware also did this when I was there), as it’s easy to go through a week, a month, even a year seeing people in a working environment and never really getting to know them.
Yesterday was a “special” Fuqua Friday, as the Daytime MBA program was joined by the Cross Continent MBA Class of 2010d, as well as members from the Weekend Executive MBA class and the Goethe MBA class. We’re all here together on campus at the same time, with the CCMBA and Goethe classes combining to form one large elective-taking cohort. Given that the CCMBA and Goethe classes have never met, as well as having our residency start Friday, this event was a perfect opportunity for everyone to get together and say Guten Tag!
Hitting some traffic around D.C. yesterday, I arrived at the Washington Duke hotel a little later than I expected (around 4 p.m.), but there was still plenty of time to get cleaned up and wander over to the 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Happy “Hour”. It was great catching up with all of the CCMBA’ers that I haven’t seen since St. Petersburg, but the highlight of the evening was really meeting up with Dan McCleary from Admissions, who I’ve ‘known’ through the Internet for some time but had never actually met. Funny thing…Dan and I grew up in the same hometown, albeit about a decade apart (Dan went to the inferior rival high school though!) Obvious timing differences aside, as similar as we are, we would’ve been good friends back in MD.
Unfortunately, as events like these often go, there’s never enough time to walk around and catch up with everyone you want to talk to. There’s a few other Daytime students that I’ve ‘known’ through Twitter that I wasn’t able to run into, and there are still plenty of CCMBA’ers that I haven’t caught up with. But Chris and Syreeta, if you end up reading this, hopefully we can catch up at one of the dinners in the next week…
And speaking of ‘unfortunately’…I don’t know if it’s because the CCMBA’ers were there or what, but I was told that “the beer never runs out this early” at other Fuqua Friday’s. What can I say, our class knows the value of FREE!
Great to meet you in person Randy! Thanks for introducing me to so many classmates. I’ll try to make as many events over the next two weeks as possible. Durham recs: Dos Perros, Revolution, Piedmont, Federal, Rue Clare, Vin Rouge, Nana’s, Locopops, Triangle Brewery, Alivia’s, Fullsteam Brewery, Whiskey Bar, Toast, Bull McCabe’s, and much more. See you Monday.
Thanks Dan, it was great meeting you as well. I’ll definitely keep these recs in mind, I’m definitely not a fan of eating at the Thomas Center 3 meals a day, 14 days in a row!