Tonight, we party.

Yesterday, The Business School threw a banquet for the graduating class of 2010 (that’s me!) and it was awesome.
Normally, I’m not into banquets and such because they’re boring, the food is bad, and I hate having to make small talk to fill the time. But this was basically the last hurrah for my Business School peers and I, and I was going to make the most of it.

We started drinking at 4pm at one of my classmate’s house, because obviously by now we are alcoholics and need to have a pre-drink before every single conceivable event. The weather was beautiful and we took tons of prom-esque pictures on his patio. I tried to be in as many pictures as possible because I had spent hours curling my hair¹, and obviously everyone needed a reminder of my beautiful face in their photo albums.
It was so great to see my old classmates all together again², and everyone looked beautiful in their suits and dresses. Despite the fact that I would not consider most of these people my best friends, even feeling like an outsider at times, I know I won’t see some of these people ever again, and certainly not all together like this, so I tried to savour every moment. It was an afternoon spent in the sun, toasting to our youth, congratulating ourselves on surviving Business School, and anticipating what’s to come.

The banquet itself was quite standard, but I was lucky to be seated with people whose company I actually enjoy (and enjoy immensely when inebriated). We had a grand time sharing stories of our classmates (or in my case, myself), recalling our best and worst professors, and of course, stealing cake. The banquet was buffet-style, so while there was a huge line for the appetizers and entrees, there was no one around the dessert table (at first). So I came up with the genius idea of stealing an entire cake and bringing it back to our table. TM executed the plan flawlessly and brought an entire, untouched mango mousse cake to our table. The servers were not impressed with us, but luckily no one tried to remove it (otherwise they would have had to wrestle it from my claws). We did not stop there. We then proceeded to bring the rest of the dessert buffet to our table. There were over a dozen cakes, and trays upon trays of tarts and brownies and other delicacies. Our table became dessert porn central, and we feasted. Dessert gluttony is the best kind of gluttony.

After dinner, there were buses taking us to The Club, but our program director asked us to control ourselves. “Please don’t let me end up in the Globe and Mail on Monday, like the MBA students did.” We, of course, ignored him. In the words of our student president, “For the rest of our lives, we will uphold The Business School’s ethical code, and we will represent our school in the best light. But tonight, we party.”

BI wanted to go home and change before The Club, and since my feet were killing me, I decided to go with her. Apparently we weren’t the only ones with this idea, because we ended up piling eight people into our friend’s tiny Audi. There were cops on every street as we drove through downtown, so we had to duck our heads and lie on people’s laps to avoid being seen. It was reminiscent of a certain night in first-year when we had 10 people in a similar-sized car (two people in the trunk). We debated the trunk idea, I was nominated because I was smallest, and I would have done it if I weren’t afraid to mess up my hair (see previous note about how long I spent on my hair). Also, as BI pointed out, “If the cops did pull us over and found a car full of mostly brown guys, with an Asian girl in the trunk, that would not go over well.”

Once I got to BI‘s apartment, I took full advantage of her hospitality and changed out of everything: my shoes, my dress, my purse, even my earrings. She has great style, and I had no qualms about the fact that my entire outfit that evening was going to be sponsored by her. At The Club, we joked with the bouncer that everything I was wearing belonged to her (to distract him from noticing that we had cut the entire line), and he said, “100%? Or 90%?” “Oh, well, not 100%,” I said, remembering that I was obviously wearing my own underwear. “Everything visible to the eye is hers. Everything underneath is mine.” When I saw the amused expression on BI‘s face, which mirrored the bouncer’s, I realized what the line sounded like. I swear to God, I don’t do this intentionally, I just never think before I open my mouth!

The rest of the night was kind of a blur. We had VIP booths and tons of bottles floating around, although I tried to limit my alcohol consumption (very difficult when there’s free bottles all around).

All in all, last night was a great ending to my journey at The Business School. Since I will be missing convocation, I can consider myself an official graduate at any point. I choose today. Today is the beginning of a new chapter in my life. Brave new world, here I come.

1. The process of getting my hair to curl (and stay curled) was a Herculean task. I’ve only used a curling iron once before, when I was 18, so I burned myself several times in the process. [↩]
2. Last year, we all had the same classes together as a ‘section’, but the sections got split up this year. [↩]