#51. Faculty Holiday Dinner (Saturday, December 1, 2012)

What was your best day…of taking a much-needed break?

Throughout my schooling years and into my working years, I had maintained this unwavering habit of never going to bed before midnight. And when exam period rolled around, that typically meant getting into a week-long cycle of forgetting when is night and when is day.

This time, it was the end of my first term at Duke, and I had let things get out of hand with my Time Series Econometrics (#68) study sessions going until the sun came up. I had been so wrapped up in vector autoregression that I almost forgot about the department holiday dinner, until Brian (#62) reminded me the Friday night before.

I figured I could spare a few hours. So after getting up when I did on Saturday and figuring out the Mincer-Zarnowitz regression, I called a taxi to the Hope Valley Country Club.

As has been well-established to this point (#86, #62, #57), at every party I go to I always: (1) am one of the first people there; and (2) do exactly one really stupid thing. In this case it was forgetting that there was a dress code, which led to me being asked several times that night whether the hoodie I was wearing was considered Canadian semi-formal.

I had thought that, with exams and all, it was only going to be small group of people. But it ended up being a full-blown thing, with most of the students and faculty, plus their families, filling up the lavish event space. This was the first holiday event I attended where my colleagues were old enough to have their own spouses and families to bring. And I don’t know, it just made me feel mature. The turkey dinner was pretty good too, as were the walls of appetizers and desserts. Though, I did just miss out on the German chocolate cake – on account of listening to Walter’s story (after he walked in two hours late) of how he got lost in the dark on his way, started hearing police sirens, and then realized he was driving on the golf course.

As for the open bar afterwards, I think I made full use of it. I watched the Alabama vs. Georgia SEC Championship Game with Jason Simonsen (the former Jim Harbaugh assistant, #57), then joined him in downing a series of Long Island Iced Teas (my first time). The drinks here must have been seriously watered down, because after some of those, plus the drinks from earlier, I came home to probably my most productive six hours of studying ever.

Safe to say, that magical three-hour intermission – right in the middle of a full week of non-stop studying – may very well have been the reason why I ended up acing the Time Series Econometrics exam on Monday. Plus the two exams that came after that.