Month: January 2013

My First Birthday Celebration in London!!

I celebrated my birthday on Sunday with a bunch of friends over an awesome Turkish dinner. It was a semi-surprise party organised by a friend who – I learnt that night – had originally set out to plan a surprise event …but then must have somehow forgotten when he sent me a facebook message to tell me about what he was doing. I guess once he realized what had happened, he decided that the guest invited would simply remain a secret ….along with the location of the dinner. With him claiming to know exactly who all of my friends were, I was quite eager to see who’d turn up at the party!

End of Exams = End of Prohibition

Apologies for my lack of posts these last few weeks. For most of the Christmas period, I was far too busy with endless hours of tearful revision, pulling my own hair out and generally losing the will to live. Not painting the prettiest picture of MSc life here, but the picture shows nothing but the truth. Some of it can be attributed to the fact that I am the perfect face of lastminute.com, but really, the reading list is EXTENSIVE, at best. Admittedly, I expected nothing less, for it is a one-year degree programme at one of the top ten universities in the world, and it is student nature to moan.

The experiment revisited…

I am deeply sorry for the delay but, as you know, we are always busy at Imperial College 😉 Yet, I’d still like to share my experiences on my previously announced “experiment”, which took place during the Christmas holidays.

As you know, we had only three weeks to study for our exams, which is nothing regarding the amount of readings and lecture slides we were supposed to absorb. So, the main task when you start your revision is to come up with a good plan how to proceed! Since you are short of time, you’ll need to structure your study materials and differentiate between “very important”, “important” and “less important” parts.

The Lonely Planet Guide: Imperial, RMFE

First things first… Apologies for not being able to update my blog regularly. It has been a hectic couple of months, namely with exams, partying after exams and assessment centres (in that order). I’ll begin with the exams as that’s probably what will appeal to most of you. So there were four of them… Risk Management, Financial Statistics, Stochastic Calculus and Investment Portfolio Management. They were bloody hard!! To be fair, Risk Management and Financial Statistics were ‘fair’ papers as students who studied had the ability to do well. Stochastic Calculus was another paper that was reasonable although there was not sufficient enough time to finish the paper with most students complaining about this issue.

The Business School’s Cross-Programme Night

I was going through the pictures on my phone today when I came across a catalogue of photos from a really fun night I had at the Business School’s cross-programme event that was held back in November. I should have posted about it ages ago, but it sort of got forgotten in the midst of all the deadlines. So here’s a slightly delayed peek at what went down that evening:

As an intern for the events team at the Business School, I help out at some events with things like set up, break down and registration. Since I was going to be attending the cross-programme night, I figured it would be fun to help with some of the organization too, especially since I knew there was going to be a big game to get people ready for.

First round finished, ready for the second!

Back again! It’s been a hard term but we finished the first term exams last Friday and we can breathe again. Well, really not for a long time, it seems!

Next year students might be interested in knowing that we had the first term exams just after the break. We had three entire weeks for revisions (last two of December and the first of January) and then… 5 exams in a row! As I did, you might want to go back home on holidays so, my recommendation, start working hard and studying from the very beginning of the course, otherwise you will not be able to enjoy your “deserved” holidays.

The disease effect.

Friday:

I spent the night super sick with the painful flu that’s been travelling around Imperial. I don’t think I’ve ever had a full blown flu over one night – with no hints of it approaching! Of course it happened the day I had three meetings, a quiz, class and a team dinner. GRRrrrrr! The weekend was just a day away!!

Without much energy to do anything, I spent the day at home trying to find things to think about while I lay in bed with a dizzying fever – coughing my lungs out. Growing up, I only ever used to get sick once every few years.

The bear has found its way out of hibernation!

Happy New Year Everyone!!

Time flew by so quickly, I can’t believe it’s 2013 –

————–2013 and…. just to add to the volume of annoying comments about the end of the world, let me say this – it’s a miracle that Facebook made it through the 21st of December without wanting itself to crash from sheer exhaustion of having to display the same Armageddon jokes and comments over and over again!

I have to admit that it was rather fun reading about all the people who stocked up on food, First Aid supplies and other non-perishable items on the 22nd. As one of my friends put it, – the end of the world means the end of the world for..well 

Study Galore

First of all, I hope you all had a great start of the new year! My NYE celebration was magnificent, the idea of having to study on the day afterwards a bit less though.. Anyway, on the 4th of January I had to leave the lovely Netherlands again to go back to London for a final weekend of studying before the exams. After that one weekend, of which you will probably spend half talking to class mates on the phone about how crazy much work you have done and/or still need to do, it is time for the exams… The first day can be terrifying, since you don’t know what to expect, luckily my best friend from Amsterdam sent me lucky socks (see photo), hahaha!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hey Everyone!

Sorry for the late post! I meant to write to you all a week ago but got caught up having fun at home, in New Delhi, India! 🙂

Well, let me warn you, from experience, the winter break is super hectic – with balancing family, friends and revisions!

But never mind that, I am sure we will all find our own way of doing it right.

I just want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year – may 2013 bring you all your desires and more <3

And to sum it up, the Avanti-way:

“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”