The last lecture

The second semester ended a week ago, and so my schoolmates and I have a month of Easter holidays to spend now. The exam period will start afterwards, i.e. no lectures – just self-study and several written tests.

This means that I have heard my very last university lecture – on Political Economy – and I have to admit that once it was over, it did feel somewhat strange. A phase in my life is ending inexorably, after three amazing years.

The second semester was quite similar to the first one, only there was even more work to do. Aside from several large essays and other assignments in the usual subjects, I spent a major part of the second semester working on my thesis, an extensive paper based on my own research and the notional pinnacle of my Bachelor studies. The work on the thesis was very hard, and as the deadline approached, the level of stress in me and my schoolmates rose. The university library was occupied to the last seat, early morning to late night, every day in the last week before the deadline. I completed my thesis on the topic of the European debt crisis on time and am very happy with the result. I should receive my tutor’s evaluation in about a month.

In addition to school duties, I have had one more thing to worry about since the second semester: during Christmas, I was forced to suddenly reassess my future plans, so I spent every free moment in the second semester looking for a job. I soon found that it was no easy task – given the ongoing economic crisis, the supply of vacant jobs for graduates is very low, even here in the UK where graduate programs have very longstanding traditions with private companies. As a result, many graduates vie for every graduate job, and the competition is very tough. My situation was made significantly more difficult by the fact that I started searching only in December when many graduate programmes were already closed for applications.

So the last three months were truly exhausting for me. While working on my thesis and usual essays, I completed countless job application forms and many mathematics, language and psychometric tests. I had no time left for leisure (and often even for sleeping), so the Easter holidays are a welcome opportunity to gain new strength for me and my schoolmates. None of us will be bored, anyway – we have work assigned for several essays, and since the results of exams in this year will greatly influence the final evaluation, it would be wise to start preparing now. Our teachers were right in telling us that we were in for a “really demanding year” at its beginning.