John Williamson, Sara Dibacco and David Palange (me) are dressed to impress.

Last weekend, students from the Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies converged upon Gallaudet University in Washington DC for the annual Duke-Yale job fair. Duke's representation was the dominant of the two schools, which was explained by one Yale as the school's inferior career services. They are also a little farther away from DC than us, but I like to think it was the former. Yeah Karen and Glenda!

The job fair was held all day Friday and its primary objective was to match emerging environmental professionals with companies hungry for young intelligent qualified blood. I was a bit surprised that the majority of organizations at the fair were consulting firms, with a trickle of government and non-profits. The day consisted of attending informal group interviews with organizations of your choice, each one lasting about 30 minutes a piece. I scheduled about five interviews, three of which ended up as one-on-one's. I chose to meet with International Paper, Piedmont Environmental Council, Battelle, WSP Group, Tetra Tech and the Clark Group.

The Duke-Yale fair marks the time when first year MEM students pick up the pace to find that "face-melting internship" (quote by Kylan Frye). It is two weeks prior to Stanback internship interviews and many other summer internship deadlines. It also represents a chance for second years to land a job in person, taking pressure off of the future job search. For me, I thought it was quite powerful and relieving to see where the Nicholas School alumni are working. One out of every two interviewers I talked to were Duke MEM alumni and were established in high level jobs.

Despite the exhaustion after the job fair, Nicholas students pushed their way over to RFD in Gallery Place/Chinatown to celebrate and mix with Duke alumni living and working in the DC metro area. After talking it up with alumni, people parted ways - some to enjoy DC's night life and others to their hotels to rest up for sightseeing the next day.