Leigh's visit and Campout

Last weekend my friend and classmate Leigh came to visit to interview for a job. She is considering relocating and is looking into the Raleigh area. Leigh arrived on Wednesday night. She interviewed on Thursday and Friday. We looked for apartments, ate some Bojangles, and spent some good time together. I enjoyed having a a visitor!

Here is Leigh looking all professional for her interview! She is researching apartments for us to view later. We went to about 10 and visited 8 apartment complexes. There are some nice apartments in the Raleigh area.

 Friday night Campout started for Duke graduate students. This is a pretty crazy tradition. In a nutshell, graduate students campout for 36 hours from Friday night at 7pm to Sunday morning at 7 am for a chance to win basketball tickets. This year is actually lasted until about 8:30 am.

 Here are the tents where students stay (rain or shine!) all weekend. The purpose of campout is to win a chance for a season ticket to the Duke basketball games. If you are present for every "check-in" you have a chance to win a ticket. Last year there were 35 check-ins in 36 hours. Dane did not count the check-ins this year. They are not at scheduled intervals (obviously) and they go through the night.

 

Some students purchase U-Hauls for the weekend. This is actually much cheaper than renting an RV. They stay dry and provide a large area for seating, etc. In the above picture you can also see the bathroom system ;). Nice.

The picture above is from Saturday morning. There is an RV on the right. I brought Dane a bag of food he had left in my car as well as some cough drops and sinus medicine. It basically rained for most of the time the students were camping out. Notice all of the students headed out of their dry areas to check-in.

Here is Leigh acting excited for Dane. After this photo we left and headed to Satisfaction for some pizza and salad! Yum.

Dane and a group of 12 of his Divinity classmates planned to camp together to maximize resources and increase their chance of winning tickets. 6 of the 12 (including Dane) made it to every check-in. On Sunday morning 4 of the 6 found of that they won tickets. Dane did not win. However, because he was in this group he will be able to attend several games this year. It is looking like it will be around 10 games. They will have a draft to separate the games.Of course, the people who actually won the tickets get to pick their games first. Traditionally, the UNC games go in the first round of the draft.

And that, in a nutshell, explains the Duke graduate school Campout. ...It is an extensive process. ;)