Amid the late semester flurry of final presentations, papers, and exam preparation, on a Saturday in early December, Fuqua students and their partners put the usual pressures of business school on hold for an evening to take part in the school’s annual prom.

No prom would be complete without a series of pre-prom parties. Gracious Fuquans packed their friends and colleagues into apartments at Station Nine and Alexan Place, encouraging the dapper guests to take staircase photos while serving diverse drinks to honor students of different nationalities.

The event itself awakened now-distant memories of high school prom: tuxedos were dusted off, and masqueraded students piled onto party buses to make their way to this year’s venue, Durham staple Motorco. With drinks flowing and music blasting, the event contrasted the serious tone of the last few weeks. The normally buttoned-up, hard driven students danced until the early morning hours, reveling in a last minute breath of reprieve before the harsh reality of finals set in.

The next day, there may have been few physical remnants of the night’s events, other than empty champagne bottles and misplaced coats, but there was an unspoken consensus that prom was a fitting celebration of the nearly finished semester, and a unifying event for the ever-eclectic student body of Fuqua.