Rachel Duncan

Thanksgiving Hangover

I have just returned from a glorious four-day vacation from schoolwork, and the month that lies ahead is starting to look a lot like what an early-morning family brunch would seem like after an all-night bender - I'm disoriented, I can't think straight, I don't want to get out of bed because I know that as soon as I do I'll get a headache, and going through the motions as if normal seems an impossible goal.  Speaking of all-night benders, I watched Walk the Line last night - I tell you there's nothing like having a glass of wine while you watch a movie about an alcoholic.  But that's beside the point - anyways, the movie was great.  I give it an A, possibly A-plus, but I suppose you already knew that.

Let's see, this post is not going to be the longest one I've ever written, and that's mostly because I can't wait for the coming month to be over, and I don't want to scare anyone away from school.  But, please understand that I'm getting married in three and a half weeks, so school is this huge distraction right now from much more important decisions I have to make - like what color ribbon should go on my flower girl's basket and whether to go with traditional floral centerpieces or ones composed of chocolates that guests can take home (seems like a no-brainer to me, but if you have any useful advice, leave me a comment).

I do have some exciting career news to share with you, but I'm going to wait until my next post because I haven't officially accepted the offer.  So check back in a few weeks for the update...

The Paris of Pennsylvania

Let's talk about Pittsburgh, what I like to call "The Paris of Pennsylvania."  Sure the name makes it sound awful, and maybe you've heard of the "smoky city," but the fact of the matter is Pittsburgh has the infrastructure of one of the wealthiest, most important cities in the country, but with only 300,000 in the city proper, and 1 million greater.  This means there is all the fine dining, symphony, ballet, football, hockey, baseball, museums, art, etc. of a big city, but incredibly low hassle to take advantage of it.  I came to visit the city twice during my long, drawn-out graduate school decisionmaking process. Both times were in February, and I *still* got sold on Pittsburgh.

So, Pittsburgh is nice and all, but unfortunately I spend a lot of my time at school and don't get out as much as I'd like to.  I knew this would happen, and that's why I visited the campus of every school I applied to.  I wanted to make sure the people wouldn't drive me crazy.  I wanted to make sure I was joining a community where I fit in and not just signing up for a school, where my academic experience would be completely disconnected from my life.  I've definitely found the connection I was looking for at Tepper.  People are down-to-earth, and it's a small school, so I can bring my fiance (and long-time steady) Jonathan to a school function and leave him alone for hours because people actually know him and want to talk to him - it's great!

Another thing I was looking for in a school was a business school that was a part of a university community and not just off by itself and isolated from the rest of the world.  Yes, I do spend most of my time at school in the Tepper building, but I love walking across the campus and checking out what's going on at the other amazing places within Carnegie Mellon - robotics, theater, design - all these programs are world-class here and making incredible contributions to the world all the time.  And in the MSCF program (I am a dual-degree student), some of CMU's best faculty from the Heinz school and CMU's Math and Statistics department come to Tepper to teach as part of the program.  It's hard to find a university community that is that open to cross-departmental collaboration.