#5. Duke (Thursday, March 8, 2012)

What was your best day…of finding out something that would change your life?

Part 1

Let’s suppose, for a second, that I had decided to go in a different direction with this site, and instead make it list off, say, “the most important, life-changing days of my life”. If that was the case, then this entry here would be at the top. And the rest wouldn’t be particularly close.

So where did I stand at the start of this day?

Well, after spending my first two years of undergraduate doing everything I possibly could – academically, socially, professionally, psychologically – to derail my career prospects, and then spending the year-and-a-half after that recovering (#26) to a somewhat-acceptable state, things still seemed very tenuous. With a month to go until graduation.

Through all four years, I had very little internship experience – so the job search was pretty much non-existent¹. And my overall grades were not top-notch² and my research experience was limited, so a good graduate program seemed like a longshot.

And all of the programs I had applied for – UNC and Penn PhD, Toronto MA even Ottawa MA (which, at a mediocre school like that I thought was a shoo-in³) – had rejected me as well.

So yeah, I had no prospects to speak of, and was facing down the very real possibility of being an unemployed, directionless college graduate. Except there was still that one other Master’s program…

Around the time of my January awakening (#13), I was of the mind that I wouldn’t bother applying to the Duke Economics Master’s. The program cost too much, I probably wasn’t getting in, and even then it was just a Master’s so I still needed to figure my shit out after that anyways. But, I don’t know what, at the last minute I decided: what the hell, why not.

That Thursday evening I got an e-mail from Duke University admissions. I slowly scrolled over and clicked on it, with no expectations whatsoever in my mind.

I had been accepted.

I was shocked, but ecstatic. I couldn’t believe it. I just got into Duke University. I just got into Duke University. I just got into Duke University. This was the greatest thing ever. And an immeasurable bliss followed for the next three hours.

Now, thing was, I wasn’t sure at all whether I was going to actually accept the offer. The tuition for a term was over $20K USD, about five times the tuition at Waterloo. And Master’s programs at good schools did not offer scholarships: they were meant essentially as a money-making machine for the school – taking in students who weren’t good enough to start a career out of undergraduate or good enough to actually go do their PhD directly, but wanted a big name on their resume. And after talking with my parents after, I was just as uncertain – though I had a couple of weeks after this to think about it before making a decision.

Didn’t matter in any case, though. I finally had something. After all these years of being rejected from any proper job, I had achieved something real through a competitive process. After all these years of believing that I had no math or academic skills that were of value to anyone, one of the top institutions in North America wanted me to study there.

Vindication, at last.

Part 2

And that was cause for celebration. The next day, Friday, in the spur of the moment, my best friend Masato (#69, #26, #13) and I decided to buy a set of Settlers of Catan⁴ to play that night. So we go to J&J’s and pick it up, along with the 5-6 player expansion, and this second board game Scotland Yard⁵.

Then, that night at my place, we gather our group, which today also includes Cranford (#13) and Alejandro (Bolivian computer science guy we played badminton with, #104). We try and get Rob⁶ as well, but he messages us telling us he “ate too much pizza and is feeling sick”.

We play Scotland Yard first. Then we order two extra-large pizzas from Pizza Pizza, as we always do. Then we play our first game of four-player Catan. It’s the funnest board game I’ve ever played. After two hours, Masato wins.

It’s an hour past midnight, so we figure we’ve got time for another game… It ends up going something like four hours.⁷

Basically, we all get to 7-8 points (out of the 10 needed to win), then we all refuse to trade with each other; and on multiple instances, when a player just needs to not roll a seven on their turn in order to have the resources to win the game…they roll a 7⁸. Finally, after a lot of bad rolls and tense moments, I pull through.

Cranford, Alejandro, and Masato all take the six a.m. bus home, and I fall into my bed for a nice long sleep.

To top it all off, Saturday night is the graduation ball for the seniors, where I finally get to deliver the big news on the Duke offer to my excited program director Brad (#92, who was one of my references) and all of my other friends and classmates.

And in that very moment, standing in the middle of the crowd – with Masato, Tommy Tong (#26, #13), Kurt Huang (#106, #76), and all my other friends – hearing about the greatness that I was destined for, I finally feel that all the pain I endured in all my years in university leading up to this was all worth it. That all the work I had done to remake myself – both academically, and as a person – in these past eighteen months (#31, #26), has finally paid off in the greatest way possible.

(N.B. I accept the offer.)

The closest I got were interviews for a government financial officers program and for a research assistant position for the institution I’d end up working for later (#55).
Though the stellar last few terms did make up somewhat for my terrible math performance in the first two years.
Well, technically I got accepted but into this “qualifying program” where I had to take a bunch of Economics courses that I hadn’t done in my undergraduate (basically adding another year to the Master’s)…i.e. do a whole undergraduate minor first.
Which we had been introduced to by David Huang and Dennis Bei at turkey at their place a few weeks earlier.
Which I had always been interested in playing after playing it once in fifth grade.
Rob was this big guy we also played badminton with. Several months earlier, there was a similar incident with him when the group decides to “race” over to the gym, Rob gets there first, then right away says he’s feeling really sick has to back out because “he ate too much pizza for lunch.” (I was watching Moneyball in theaters, so I missed that.) The two or three other times I saw him on campus, he was also eating pizza.
We tried to rope in Kurt as a fifth player, but he literally just started a League of Legends game a minute ago and can’t join. Game probably would’ve went another hour at least with him…
Basically, if someone rolls a 7, anybody who’s got seven or more resource cards (which the guy about to win usually does) has to discard half of them. Full rules of Catan here.