Restart?!

For many first year university students in the UK, the summer break symbolises three months of calmness, tranquillity, relaxation and latent preparation for their future career. As usually, I have decided to go against the mainstream and few days after my arrival to Prague in June, I started my summer internship at HomeCredit International, which is one of the biggest retail banks operating in Central and Eastern Europe.

The internship was especially enriching because the financial group’s headquarters is located in Prague, so I have been given an opportunity to collaborate with many experts in their fields responsible for all HomeCredit subsidiaries, who were more than happy to share all their experience and to pass on me some of their duties. In the end of my internship, I could claim to be actively involved in detection and monitoring of frauds, development or update of current anti-fraud systems in Russia and Kazakhstan, communication and harmonisation of policy implementation in particular countries or pioneering and presentation of new method of sophisticated frauds detection.

Although I finished my internship in early September, I have managed to participate in Conference of Forum 2000 Foundation, which is annually held in Prague and hosts few hundreds of guests from all around the globe, who usually discuss one main topic from different perspectives, this year’s theme was “Societies in Transition.” Among many famous delegates, you could find even Nobel Prize laureates like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi or former South African president Frederik Willem de Klerk. Unfortunately, being actively involved in the organisation of the event results in your absence during panel discussions; however, despite of these duties, I have managed to meet and quickly talk with many delegates, who usually described their own experienced with the society in transition. Overall, the ambiance of the conference is hardly depictable, especially for returning fellow Forum 2000 teammates. Personally, I can only recommend participation in this event.

My involvement in the Conference marked the last event in Prague, after which I returned back to York. It seems to me that penultimate year of dual degree is more difficult than the first year, although the autumn term is usually calm, when many students are preparing the ground for their summative essays. In this aspect I also follow the crowd; however, I have decided to join the college and university rugby team, what resulted in almost exponential increase in my workload, which inhibits any potential attempts to go out and enjoy the vibrant nigh life in York. Moreover, October and November is the time for many summer internships deadlines, so at the end of the day, I am so tired that I subconsciously look forward to rapidly approaching winter break.

Restart?!

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