Sometimes You Just Feel It.
In the Spring of 2011 my wife and I (she was my fiance at the time) travelled to Durham from D.C. We were coming down for her to attend a 2nd-look weekend at one of the not-to-be-named medical schools in the triangle. Hint: their color is blue (ok, not a hint at all). It was a bit of a surprise option for her. She didn’t anticipate getting into the school and only applied because the application was so unique – one that really measured the heart in candidates in addition to their academics. That spoke to us, and for her, it was the exciting thing about visiting that weekend.
Somewhere along the way, right after I-95 and I-85 split we drove over Lake Gaston. The beauty of the area kind of smacked us in the face. We both commented on how beautiful it was, our enthusiasm for moving “South” seemed to slowly grow each mile of the drive. By the time we got to Falls lake outside of Durham we were madly in love. It helps that it was such a beautiful time of year, but something special about this place resonated with us. The next day we attended our first event at the 2nd look weekend while I also had some meetings with potential education roles here. Both of us came together by the end of the day and just said “it just feels right here.”
Sometimes you just feel it in your soul that something feels right. The feeling is strong, not necessarily loud or emotional, but one of clarity and conviction. Coming to the Triangle for Medical School was one of the best life decisions we’ve ever made and at the time it just feels right.
I had that same feeling in late July when the address of our new building was sent to us. We received the address late in a Friday night email. I drove down to see it mid-morning the next day. Walking up to the campus the weather was strangely perfect for a July day in Durham. The leaves were moving gently. The landscaping was well taken care of and the plants sort of whispered in echo to the sound of the tree leaves. I got to stand outside of the building and stare up at it, in silence, and with nothing in the world to distract me. I took a few seconds, as the father of two young children felt unrushed, like I could sit here for a minute. I wondered aloud to myself “are you the one?” in the same voice as the children’s book “Are you my mother?” (remember, I have two young kids and this book is popular). That I was even open-minded enough for the building to work was a change of heart from my usual defeatist attitude. Something just felt right.
The facility was empty but the door was curiously unlocked (surely a snafu because it's never been open any other time I’ve come to visit). As I walked into the main atrium it just hit me like a ton of bricks (it is indeed a brick building, but the pun was not intended when I originally wrote that line).
The building was beautiful, well lit, and the energy in the atrium, though empty and silent, also seemed to whisper to me: “this is the place.”
A lot of things have had to go right for the building to work out since that day. So many questions come up when vetting a building for a school, namely, can we afford it? Also others like, “will the traffic plan work?” “Does it have a sprinkler system?” “How about environmental factors?” “Is it zoned appropriately?” Also, also… Can we afford it?!
We’ve had several professionals come into the building to help us inspect its viability and with each visit we find something about the building that is *easier* than normal. “The sewage line runs this way, which is great for creating new bathrooms…” “The riser room already has a connection to the main water line…” “The traffic plan will work in a few different ways…” “Wow, the natural gas line runs to an external boiler room, this is fantastic for (insert technical jargon I don’t understand)”
The negotiations on the building went shockingly fast and fit neatly into our budget model. I was particularly struck by our meeting with the building ownership group. Of all the real-estate discussions we’ve had over the last 3 years our discussion was one of the most pleasant and supportive. What got me the most: at the end of the meeting one of the managers of the facility ownership group said, “We’ve been trying to determine how we want to manage this building, and well, this just feels right.”