I did not really know what to expect from this event when I was going there with my wife last Friday. For some reason the word “gala” implied something rather special to me. Therefore, when I saw announcement about Annual MBA Gala in the email from MBA Students’ Association, I put the date on my calendar.
The Gala was scheduled from 9 PM to 2 AM. We could not make it till about 10.30 PM. When we came in, we found the event in one of the university’s ballrooms. The room was big enough so that the crowd of some 150 people was not overstuffed. The light was dimmed and the music was loud enough so you could not keep conversation without raising your voice quite a bit.
There were two major happennings in the room. There was a relatively large group of people who were dancing in the middle of the ballroom to what I suspect was regular club music. And the other group of comparable size was concentrated around the open bar. These two groups were not mutually exclusive and some people flowed freely back and forth. As I said, I did not really know what to expect from such an event. I hoped I would have a chance to meat new people from either part-time or full-time programs and talk about something I never have time to do in the classroom.
But in that atmosphere there was no chance for any sustainable conversation, as you would have to almost yell to overcome the music. So I could resort to dancing and drinking as the only two available options. Even that was not quite an attractive prospect as I did not see any familiar faces at first. We decided to stay for just a bit and writeoff the cost of the tickets as sunken cost, instead of trying vigourosly to recoup it by pillaging the open bar for the remainder of the evening :-)
When I got to the bar, which was overcrowded and the two barmen were obviously overwhelmed working the crowd, I saw a few classmates from my part-time MBA classes. At least I found some company for toasting 
So we mingled with this group. Stroke a few conversations, I made a couple more visits to the bar and in about an hour we were ready to leave.
Total I saw about 10 people from the part-time program. The rest of the crowd were apparently full-time students. They had noticeably more cohesiveness than our small part-time faction, obviously because they had had much more time together in and out of class.
This gala reminded me the dance parties in my undegraduate years. Except in those times they used to be called “discotheque”, not “gala”. The atmosphere was pretty much similar, except we did not have a bar right in the dancing room, so we had to go back to our rooms to get boozed, as the discotheques were typically held right in the students’ dorm.
Anyways, now I know what MBA Gala is. Not that there is something wrong with the format, because in my undegraduate time discotheques were indeed very exciting events for me. May be I am just getting old :-(
When I came home I decided to look up what is the formal definition of gala. One of online dictionaries had this:
a festive occasion; celebration; special entertainment: a gala featuring opera stars in their most famous scenes.
So I concede, as it was indeed a festive occasion and celebration of sorts, and I am just an old fart
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