Fifteen

I shuddered at the admission price of $60 when I got to the front of the Fall Ball ticket sales line. For a second, I considered retracting my decision to attend fall-ball, but I quickly thought to myself: “We may be having tons of lobster that night, so the event may actually be worth $60.” We didn’t quite have lobster that night, but we did have lobster bisque. It was great, as was the rich (and I mean rich) brownie dessert. I hadn’t had such a good three-course meal in a long time. The magnificence of the meal was almost as great as the ballroom itself. The ballroom incited the kind of feeling that one has as a special guest in a red-carpet formal event. The lighting was perfect and the layout of the room (which included a dance floor) was very well done.

I was tremendously impressed at the level of planning that went into the Fall Ball night. After all, we all are Sloanies and all the planners of the event are sitting through the same rigorous CORE that I’m sitting through; so where the planners found the time to plan such an elaborate event was beyond me. It’s amazing how MBA students transform when the Disc-Jockey turns the music up. I don’t know whether it’s a lot of energy waiting to burst out, or if it’s revenge for the level of difficulty of the CORE, but whatever it is, it’s clear that a lot of Sloanies (1^st and 2^nd years) turn into dance machines once the music is turned up. For three hours in a row, the dance floor was constantly full. Unforgettable dance-all-night times like these make me wish that events like Fall Ball happened every week. Now I understand why MIT Sloan ranked number one on the Princeton Review’s list of Most Enjoyable MBA Experiences not too long ago.

That night was the first time that I had met so many second year MBA students at once. There couldn’t have been a better networking opportunity. What easier and quicker way to get to know someone well than to dance with them. Initially, the night, at least for me, went off to a rough start, as it took me 30 minutes to find parking, ten minutes to walk in the blazing cold, and ten minutes to walk back to my car (in the blazing cold) after I realized that I forgot my ticket; as the night went on, the true colors of the event began to surface, and once that first spoon of lobster bisque went down my throat, all became well and the rest was history.

All in all, it was a great night. Sloan MBA students continue to amaze me with the speed at which they put these events together. Even though I got a $40 parking ticket that night for parking in a Resident-Only spot, I was still appeased by the outcome of the night overall. Without question, I look forward to next year’s Fall Ball event. Hopefully this time the DJ will spin the record beyond 1 A.M.

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