Every few months, Jason would post up on our cohort's Facebook page how far along we were to receiving that little piece of MBA paper with the $200 frame. When we made it to "P1MBAS13 = .3125 (MBA)," I could hardly believe it.
As time sneakily flew by, our cohort magically started becoming one giant group of friends. Maybe these friendships were the result of collectively understanding what it's like to sit in a weekend of classes while everyone else is at the beach, or maybe this was the result of a bunch of Type A's with presumably similar interests - Gator football, Tim Tebow, less government intervention, Gator football and Tim Tebow.
Who knows how we all made friends, or how little groups of friends started getting tight, or how anyone becomes friends with anyone. But I like what the articulate and thoughtful C.S. Lewis says about the initial emotion - "Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!'"
Who knows how we all made friends, or how little groups of friends started getting tight, or how anyone becomes friends with anyone. But I like what the articulate and thoughtful C.S. Lewis says about the initial emotion - "Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!'"
I pretty much hate Facebook, but using it for groups is genius (and also for stalking people). Every class, we all used our closed Facebook page to write what we were thinking about the class, or to post up a picture of something funny. When I felt a vibration on my iPhone alerting me that the beautifully bearded Matt was asking the tall, body-that-makes-you-not-want-to-take-your-shirt-off-at-a-pool-party Derrick what color deep V t-shirt he was going to wear that evening, I'd watch the whole class gradually smile, like a bunch of drunks doing the wave at a Jaguars game. Or when Candace posted up a link to the Titanic Coloring Book (because every child should be coloring dead bodies in ice cold water, as our eccentric writing professor, Jane Douglas, matter-of-factly presented in class), I randomly laughed out loud, confirming the brand I carried of a bearded homeless man that talks to himself and creepily laughs at his own thoughts.
Our cohort studied together, peed together (those bathrooms are packed during breaks), drank together, learned together and made fun of things together. I read once that a Harvard MBA isn't a Harvard MBA because the curriculum is so far beyond anything else. A Harvard MBA is a Harvard MBA because you're studying with - and peeing next to - really rich and smart people - people that will become major industry and market leaders. I'd say those are good people to know.
At UF, it's no different. I like peeing next to smart, articulate people- people that will, no doubt, become leaders, if they already haven't. I like learning from them and debating with them. I like being philosophically challenged and I like when people have answers to problems that I can't even seem to comprehend. My humble and engaging father told me last week, "It's not about what you know. It's about how you handle what you don't know." No matter how criticized MBA programs are for lacking true value, this personal piece of value goes under the radar in cheap quantitative studies about MBA employment rates and salary levels. The true value, as in anything, is in the people. The UF admissions team, turns out, is not only funny, but good at finding quality people with big bladders. And maybe that's why we're all okay peeing next to each-other - we're in this program to learn, not just from the professors, but from each-other.
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| What a handsome group! (P1MBAS13) -click to enlarge- |
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