“You are from MMS, you won’t understand.”

I heard this statement multiple times from a handful of Fuqua’s Master of Quantitative Management (MQM) students. I used to meet them often given our program’s concurrent schedules and the different events at school. Today, four months into the program, they’re my best friends.

They say that your vibe attracts your tribe. I didn’t know that being in MMS, I would have the “MQM vibe” and be in a group full of MQM people.

MQM, just like MMS is a 10-month program at Fuqua. The programs have a similar number of students from a similar age group. The main difference is their coursework has a heavy focus on data analytics and therefore, they can have a different set of job outcomes.

As you might have guessed, I am the only person from MMS in my closest group of friends. It’s seven MQM students and one MMS student. The advantages? Well I definitely know all the MQM schedules, meetings, courses, faculty, events and what not. I might even pick up some knowledge of R programming. empirical economics, or python programming—a far-fetched topic for me—by the end of the year.

It’s definitely fun to hang out with a group of people different from those in your program, as you get to learn different perspectives, opinions and lots of ideas. Having said that, it might feel like you are an outlier when you can’t relate with them. But that doesn’t mean that you actually are. You get used to the lingo after spending almost every day with them.

You might be thinking, why don’t I hang out with people from MMS? Well, who says I don’t? I have an equally amazing group of friends from my cohort as well. From working out to socializing together, I have made innumerable memories with them, that I will cherish forever.

Fuqua is all about finding your own tribe—people with whom you can vibe together. I consider myself lucky to have two amazing groups from each of the programs. My MMS group is my family, and I have had some of my best laughs and uncountable rants with them. On the other hand, my MQM group is my home away from home. I have friends who’ll make the best food, who vibe with me on music, who irritate me to the core, who make random outings at 12 a.m., and then those who’ll be my safe space. I’m eternally grateful to have found my “imperfectly perfect tribe.”

If there’s anything that I’ve learned in this short period at Fuqua, it is to reach out and connect to different people. Make good friends and spend considerable time with each one of them. Given the culture Fuqua has, you are bound to find your “buddies” sooner or later. At the end, apart from a great degree, you want to make even greater friendships that you’ll maintain for a lifetime. These are the people who will shape you into a better person and be your rocks for the rest of your Fuqua journey and beyond. And as the saying goes, “Happy are those who find friends but fortunate are those who find a family in them.”