So this was it...my year in Oxford!
2 days ago I finally moved out of my college and vacated my room...officially, I will be a student until Sep30, but that's just a formality.
So, how was my year?
It all started with a car journey from Moembris to Oxford. I remember the night when we arrived, I couldn't believe that I actually made it into Oxford...it was unbelievable. From the first moment, I fell in love with the place and my new classmates...I quickly made friends during the first couple of days and my best friends from the year are still those who I went out with during the first couple of nights in Oxford. The courses started with a massive bang and I fell dead asleep on the couch in the cafeteria on friday afternoon after week 1.
The first term passed quickly with overwhelming amounts of work, two visits from Melina, Queer Bop (the party of the year), my first Oxford Ball, being run over by a car, a meltdown with my study group in the last week (I actually told them to go f*ck themselves and left) and my first exams in suit, gown and bow tie.
Spending christmas at home, my world collapsed when my love Melina broke up with me...nothing seemed to make sense any more and fortunately I managed to put up enough energy to start the second term...looking back I am quite surprised that I managed to do that, considering how shattered my life seemed to me. I guess all the hard work kept my thoughts occupied and the pain away, at least as long as I was around people.
The second term was easier than the first one from a coursework point of view - we all had our bruises and scars from the first term and now we knew how to shell out a 1000 word essay on a completely random topic that we had never heard about in 30 mins. After all those rejections during the first term and 1000s of trips to London to meet every Investment Banker who would listen to me for 2 minutes, I finally managed to make a bank interested in me...even though it was just an internship, I thought it was the chance of my life. During Hilary (term 2), I was even visited by my mom, who stayed in Oxford for a week, even though I had almost no time for her. Finishing with more exams and picking our electives for the third term, the second term went by in a second.
Trinity (term 3) was tougher than expected, but nevertheless, I had the most fun during that term. I was more relaxed, because I knew I had an internship over the summer and I knew the tricks of the trade to spend as little time as possible in the library and as much time as possible in the pub. Several college balls, the massive MBA Olympics in Paris, Wadstock open air festival, the African drumming session, the Sylvester Award show (Juergen = most likely to end up in jail) and the Wadham College ball were the highlights of Trinity.
The summer was all "work hard, play harder" as an Investment Banker in London. I literally worked my ass off to finally get the offer to join Macquarie Investment Bank after my finals in Oxford. I LOVE LONDON and god bless capitalism and the greedy investment banks ;o)
Last week I finished up my MBA in Oxford and said goodbye to more than 200 friends...and that was it, my year in retrospect.
There were good times, there were bad times (even very bad times), I learned a lot about myself and I guess I changed (at least I have become fatter, thx to the English food).
Would I do it again? Definitely! It was one of the best years of my life and definitely worth the sh*tload of ca$h that I paid for it.
Would I do some things differently? Definitely!
I would probably change my approach to getting a job (I wasted so much time on useless application efforts during the first term), I would try to better accomodate my love life in the whole situation, I would not walk home from a friend's house at 4AM in the morning just to get mugged (more correctly, almost mugged), I would probably not drink as much to avoid all those terrible hangovers I had (but then again I probably would), I would spend more time on exploring Oxford (and I mean the ancient Oxford, not the pubs, although some of them are ancient as well) and I would not miss the deadline of a 100% course paper for business history during my summer internship...I would probably have done some more things differently as well, but that doesn't really matter any more! I've done it the way I've done it and it has gotten me to where I am right now.
AND, from an academic point of view I am happy with where I am, from a professional point of view I am exalted and from a personal point of view I am quite happy about having made tons of new friends for life, but at the same time I am sad for having lost the most important friend...
