Another beginning …

The first week was “freshers week,” during which I had an opportunity to meet my new schoolmates, the campus, and the city. I also registered for my course, for extracurricular activities, and there were also lectures on the new way of life and on what to do in case of problems.

In the second week, lectures started for real, but it was still all about what books we should buy, how much time we should spend on a subject outside of lessons, and we also received a lecture plan for the entire year. It was in the third week that I started to realize that not everything would be as easy as it initially seemed. We were assigned our first essays, first projects, and told the dates for the first exam period. Five weeks have passed by really quickly and the calendar note announcing the first tests seems to be approaching at a cosmic speed – it’s only November 19. Hopefully it will work out :-).

The British take on the university system is that if the degree is the only thing you walk away with from the university, then the university has failed. This is why everybody here tries to support us as much as possible in becoming part of various activities, and so I did not resist the temptation of the broad range on offer and joined the “International Partnership between Business Schools” group. I was also elected a member of the committee representing first year students of economics and I also became a member of the student council, representing first year management students. I also joined the “Backpackers” club, which organizes various daytime trips around the university. What my university life will be like is still a surprise-in-waiting for me, but I know one thing for sure – the initial weeks were exactly as I imagined them.

Lancaster University, the sixth most prestigious university in the U.K. according to the "Guardian League Table".