I suppose I’m not alone in feeling this way, but Fridays have always carried a special cachet for me. When I was young, my extended family would always have pizza together on Friday evenings. For everyone around the table, young or old, student or worker, it was a time to come together, vent, have something to drink, and if only for a short while, to isolate oneself from the pressures of modern life. Every family has traditions, mine just seemed to deem Friday a very celebratory day. And it was.

In the same way, it seems like most business schools have some method for celebrating the end of the school week. Usually this revolves around a keg of beer, some casual conversation, and a taboo on talking about classes. Maybe we, as humans, are just wired to behave like that when we realize that we have a brief hiatus. But, as I’ve been to more and more of them, I’ve found that Fuqua’s Friday bashes might take on a greater meaning.

I never feel like Fuqua Friday becomes a gratuitous celebration. Even though we deserve just that after a treacherous work week, I can’t help but see Fuqua Friday as a channel for introducing a weary student body to a new club or a new group. The interconnectedness of everyone here is part of what makes the school unique, and Fuqua Friday seems to implicitly understand that. Whether it’s an opportunity to raise funds for a good cause or promote an obscure group that’s nonetheless important to Fuqua, these events seem to take center stage, even with the abundance of food and beer available to people in dire need of both. And with one every Friday, it seems almost democratic: each group has an opportunity to state its case, gain awareness, and hopefully get some buy in.

However noble the cause may be, the timing is fortuitous as well. I find now that between classes, career searching, and extracurricular work, I’m around people all day, but seldom actually interacting on a less formal basis. We spent so much time developing familiarity and camaraderie during our orientation, but in some ways, that gets abandoned as we all seek other pursuits. Fuqua Friday, for me, has manifested itself as a time where none of that really matters. In a way, it’s a two-hour reminder that we’re all just business students, and most of us are here for the same reason. Other complications notwithstanding, we should probably be appreciating our experience, with a beer and some novel cuisine … so on any given Friday, you’ll find me in the Fox Center, fully appreciating Fuqua Friday.