1. One of my earliest memories is of an aunt telling me not to call her son by a nickname that she didn’t like; I then proceeded to yell out his nickname 3 times and ran out the room — I was 4! To say that I was headstrong is an understatement.
2. I am a really talkative and expressive person. I remember as a child, every time I would start a new grade or school, I tried being less talkative, but I couldn’t keep quiet long enough. Eventually, I just accepted it…and now I like to think I’m the life of the party! Haha!
3. I am the middle child of 3 girls and we lost our parents at a young age. Somehow I always knew that I had to take care of my sisters even though I am not the eldest. Today, I am the person that everyone in my family comes to — no one makes a decision without talking to me. Crazy … I know …
4. I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago and I would go to a beach, river, or waterfall every weekend. Because of that, I love the water. When I am near water, I feel at peace and at home. It’s my safe place.
5. I can climb almost any tree — I can climb a coconut tree! Been doing it since I was a child.
6. When I like something, I stick with it. I go to the same restaurants and order the exact same dishes. Before moving to Durham, almost all the waiters at my favorite spots knew me.
7. Speaking of sticking with things I love, I met my husband when I was in high school. He was the cutest thing ever … wrote me love letters and all! He sneaked into my band class just to be close to me … good ole high school.
8. My husband proposed to me in Atlantic City. I had just won some money and he popped the question. He promises that he didn’t marry me for my money, though.
9. I have a terrible habit of talking in my sleep. I have full conversations with people that I have no recollection of the next morning. All my friends and family know this, yet they still talk to me in my sleep and get mad when I don’t remember our conversation.
10. I snooze for an entire hour every morning. It’s shameful, I know, but I literally need an hour to awake. If I get up any quicker, I have a horrible day.
11. In college when I learned that there was a famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, I took a semester off with a humanitarian relief group at my school and traveled throughout the region. To this day, it is still one of my most amazing experiences I’ve had.
12. I studied abroad in South Africa while in undergrad and I met Nelson Mandela … okay, I only shook his hand, but it was AWESOME!
13. I am deathly afraid of heights but while in South Africa, I bungee jumped off Victoria Falls and Bloukrans Bridge — the highest bungee bridge in the world. Because the one thing I am more afraid of than heights is people thinking that I’m chicken!
14. I have lived in a tent, a thatch hut, a wooden house and most recently, a sweet apartment in NYC.
15. I am a self-professed board game champion! I love board games and I am also really good at it. Before B-school, I held monthly game nights and everyone thought I studied the games because I was just so good.
16. I really enjoy poetry and quotes. I have books filled with writings that I’ve collected over the years that I hope to one day pass down to my children.
17. At Fuqua, I am focusing on social entrepreneurship and Health Sector Management. I hope to move into healthcare strategy after graduation. My ultimate goal is to get into corporate social responsibility. I truly believe that healthcare is a basic human right, and I want to work with corporations to make that a reality for every human being.
18. Un-justified margins in documents drive me crazy.
19. In my head, I am friends with Beyoncé, Jay Z and Oprah.
20. I haven’t eaten meat in 10 years. I initially gave it up for a month to get extra credit in a health and nutrition class and I never started back.
21. I am really intrigued by dreams; I believe that they have meaning and I’m constantly trying to make sense of them.
22. One of my goals in life is to be physically strong, body builder strong. I’ve recently mustered up the courage to start a training program.
23. I have yet to see most of the traditional, classical, must-see movies – The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind … you get the picture.
24. I love camping. Something about sleeping under the stars fascinates me.
25. In an interview one time I was asked how I’d like to be remembered. Without thinking I said “as a really old woman.” Though I thought that answer was silly then, I really do want to live to be really, really old.

Need more inspiration? Check out some more blog posts about the 25 Random Things essay.

This weekend, a little over 100 admitted students will be joining us from all over the world for the Duke MBA Blue Devil Weekend (BDW). As the BDW co-chair, I am so excited to be planning this event and I cannot wait to meet all of you. For those of you who are joining us, I want to give you a sneak peak, and for those of you who are still on the fence, I want to encourage you to register for the second BDW (in April).

If you have yet to see the incredible spirit of Fuqua, BDW will do it for you. The weekend is filled with opportunities to meet current students, your future classmates, and professors. What’s also great about the weekend is the access that you’ll have to faculty and staff. Last year, I was so scared to leave my job and go back to school, but at BDW, I was able to chat with the Career Management Center to get some of my questions answered about my career goals. I was also really concerned about the role my husband would have at Fuqua, and the Fuqua Partners club was instrumental in making us feel comfortable here. I had tons of other questions — everything from where to live to where to eat — and it was so great to always have students on hand to assist me. You may not have the same questions I did, but I know you have questions … this weekend, they will all be answered.

Beyond getting your questions answered, the weekend is a snapshot of what it’s like to be a student here. You will experience our academic environment, interact with several clubs and other student organizations and you will explore the campus. To be fair, I must share the other side of Fuqua … we will party! We are going to show you some of the best spots for a “funemployed” graduate student, you’ll discover a few of the gems of Durham, you’ll laugh till it hurts (thanks to FuquaVision), and we’ll end with an unforgettable party.

I was in your shoes last year, and what helped make my decision to come to Fuqua easy was not what people were saying, but what they were doing, sometimes unconsciously. I saw a family here at Fuqua … I saw a place where I would be challenged by my incredible classmates, but still a place safe enough to try new things and possibly fail. I met people that I actually liked, people I actually wanted to hang out with and would keep in touch with after business school. During the weekend, I thought I made friends, but in retrospect, I realized that I connected. I connected with the very essence of Fuqua, and that is why I am here today.

So for those of you are coming for this weekend, I am so psyched to introduce you to my family … my Fuqua Family. So, ask all your questions, especially the hard ones, talk to as many people as possible, enjoy the weekend, be prepared to fall in love, and give Liz Riley Hargrove a standing ovation at the kick off — she accepted you!

Visiting biotech company Genentech in San Francisco.

It feels like I got here just yesterday, but oh how the time flies! I recently finished my first term (7 more to go!) and I had a one-week fall break before the start of my second term. Instead of going home and “veggin’ out” I decided to take advantage of one of the networking opportunities here at Fuqua called Week-in-Cities. These are student led, industry-focused trips to companies in a specified city. Some of my classmates ventured to New York to visit banks, others to New Jersey to visit marketing companies, and others to Chicago and Boston to visit consulting firms. I, along with about 10 of my classmates, participated in the healthcare focused trip to California.

Enjoying a nice dinner with new & old friends during Week-in-Cities.

We visited a variety of companies — from the biotech company Genentech, to the large healthcare company McKesson, to startups HealthTap and Castlight Health and finally to the service provider Stanford Hospital. With about two to three hours at each company, we were able to tour the company, sit down with current employees including Fuqua alumni, and ask really candid questions about their work and experience. They provided invaluable insight on the company’s recruiting process. In those few hours, I really got a sense of the culture and vibe of each company.

What I thought was absolutely amazing was the sheer opportunity to even have this experience. To talk to a manager at Genentech about a product that is not yet on the market, to sit down with the founders of HealthTap and Castlight Health, incredible startups in the healthcare space, and to walk through McKesson, the oldest healthcare company in America, was nothing short of amazing. I left the weekend with lots of contacts, but more importantly, with a much better understanding of the companies that we visited.

What made the trip even more enjoyable were my classmates — some I knew before the trip and others I met while on the trip. After a demanding first term, it was such a joy to explore San Francisco with a high-spirited and fun crowd. We went to a Fuqua alumni reunion at a bar to watch the World Series, we had dinners at amazing restaurants, and did some modest shopping (we had to remind ourselves that we are broke college students). All in all, the week was an unforgettable one. As I was writing thank-you notes to some of the people who I met that week, I couldn’t help but think that it’s not every day that someone opens up their company to job seekers. Unique opportunities like this remind me every day that I made the best decision in joining Fuqua.

The Right Fit

I applied to Management Leadership for Tomorrow’s MBA Prep Program and on March 4, 2011, my journey to business school officially began. For the next 18 months, as part of the program, I visited countless schools. “Fit” was really important to me, so I wanted to actually feel what it was like to visit the campus, attend a class, and talk to professors and students. Visiting campuses narrowed my list of schools to apply to because I started to build a matrix for what I really liked and wanted to get out of my MBA journey.

My first day at Fuqua!

I also began to work diligently on crafting my story. I wanted to make sure I was going to school for the right reasons and I wanted that to ring through in my application, so I was very introspective throughout the process. I thought a great deal about the career decisions that I had made thus far, and where I wanted to be in the short-term and the long-term. I thought about location (I am from the island of sun and beaches, so crazy winters just aren’t for me!). I thought of my husband (and our pup Ziggy ) and weighed all these and many other factors in my decision making process. I also focused a great deal on GMAT prep. Test taking isn’t easy for me so I spent a lot of time and money preparing for the GMAT. That test is a beast! I would advise anyone thinking of applying to business school to get the GMAT out of the way as early as possible so that you have plenty of time to then focus on the other important parts of your application.

I Got In!

When I applied to Fuqua on January 4, I was certain that it was the place for me. I visited the school during the Duke MBA Workshop for Minority Applicants in November (definitely worth attending!) and I literally fell in love with the program and the people. I felt something at Fuqua that I did not feel at any other school … it was the “it” factor … it is something that, to this day, I still cannot put into words. That weekend, I realized that Fuqua is a place where I would be more than a number; it is a place where, from the synergies of the entire community, it is evident that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts — “Team Fuqua” is real! For the next three months, I (and everyone else who would listen to my crazy fears and was a part of my journey) was literally on edge waiting for the decision. In April, when I saw the “919” area code on my phone and heard Admissions rep Willie Green’s voice on the next line, I thought I had won the lottery. I did win the lottery, I guess. It felt utterly and absolutely wonderful to see my hard work pay off and get into the school of my dreams.

Now that I am here, the journey so far has been amazing! Classes are really, really hard, and my classmates are super duper smart, but this is exactly what I wanted (and I constantly have to remind myself of that when statistics kicks my butt!). I am pushing myself way harder than I ever have — and not just academically — I was selected to lead the Global Academic Travel Experience (GATE) trip to India. While here, I am also trying to:

1. Only do the hard stuff (things that I would never have imagined doing before)
2. Not sweat the small stuff
3. Allow myself the leeway to fail (best way to learn right?!)
4. Make each day more amazing than the last (really make this a transformative experience)