Now that Graduation is behind me and before I start my full-time job, I’ve had some time to reflect on the past two years and what I enjoyed most about my Stern experience.
I realized that it is the close friendships that I have formed with my fellow classmates over the past two years. It is truly amazing to realize that you can become such good friends with people that you didn’t know a few months or a year ago in such a short amount of time. It’s also refreshing to know that at this stage in life you can still meet new people and have new experiences that will change your life and continue to make life-long friends.
My favorite parts of Stern aren’t the stimulating classes, the exciting guest speakers, the heated case discussions, the respected and accessible professors or the breadth of electives (while those are all great). My favorite moments are potluck picnics in the park with my Block (yeah block 4!), traveling to Japan with 60 Sternies and singing karaoke all night, losing my voice at Beer Blast on Thursday nights, celebrating birthdays almost every single night of the year, attending a wedding in the DR with 20 Sternies, throwing a surprise baby shower for a classmate, and many many boat cruises around Manhattan.
While Stern is incredibly diverse, we also all have something in common. Everyone I met wants to be here at Stern and is very open to making new friends. Even people who already lived in NY and had tons of friends here warned those friends they wouldn’t be seeing much of them for two years. I’ve loved the collaborative community and I love that it doesn’t end when school ends. For instance, classmates who are launching new businesses are receiving tons of support from fellow Sternies on Kickstarter. I just traveled to Croatia for a week with two Sternies and we met up with at least three others at various points because they also happened to be there at the same time. One Block just traveled to the Jersey Shore and made t-shirts for the occasion. School’s out and yet we’re all behaving as if nothing changed and that we’ll be back for another semester.
In a few months or years, I won’t remember how many A’s (or B’s) I got, I may soon forget how to account for depreciation and amortization, and I hope I never have to do another case interview, but I’ll never forget all of the friendships I made and that made it all worth it.