Time flies by, or teamwork, researches, personal development, and extracurricular activities ...

With some of the courses, teamwork accounts for the greatest part of the final grade, and as you know, a group is only as strong as its weakest link. So you have to participate fully all the time and give your best. In addition, a lot of energy goes into ensuring that the group works as a whole and everybody contributes a hundred percent.

At the beginning, work is usually quite inefficient – team members are used to thinking and acting differently, so everything requires much discussion. A few meetings into the process, the team starts to discover the best way to tackle the assignment and team roles are assigned based on the individuals’ capabilities. It’s a complicated and lengthy process, but the result is worth it. For example, I have already delivered my first big group project with my team, and I feel our team has done a great job. Obviously, there are things to improve – you learn all your life – so it’s vital to be open to criticism, which can help you move forward. We present our projects to our seminar colleagues, who then give us their “feedback and feedforward” (their view of things that could have been done better and what and how to do better next time). This process allows the team to see their performance from a different angle and improve on their less-than-perfect aspects.

Another big time-consumer is the research, extensive research that we are expected to do in order to write reports and essays as well as by way of standard preparation for lectures. This can be rather difficult initially, given the amount of existing information. It is not easy to separate relevant, current, and credible texts from others quickly and efficiently. This is why I rely on the university library system, which allows quick and highly efficient searches throughout various databases.

My course includes a program titled “Personal and Professional Development”, under which I can participate in many useful seminars, including: teamwork, essay writing, information searching and filtering, time management, references, and employability. I can also make an appointment with a career advisor who will give me advice on CVs, cover letters, and recruitment interviews.

The University of Exeter also enables the students to receive the “Exeter Award”, a recognized program attesting to the student’s efforts in personal development. As part of this course, I must meet a number of criteria, such as acquiring work experience, attending lectures on writing CVs, or visiting an employer’s presentation, learning another foreign language, and many other things. Having received the Exeter Award, students can vie for the “Exeter Leaders Award”, the main goal of which is to certify the development of leadership, managerial, and presentation skills. Needless to say, these two courses present unique opportunities for personal development as well as a way to differentiate yourself from other university graduates.

The university also offers a broad range of extracurricular activities, from which I chose tennis, squash, and the “Business and Economics Society”. As a result, my schedule is unbelievably tight, so I am happy if I manage to cook something other than pasta or eggs, or when I have time to take a walk through the city, which is really beautiful. Unfortunately, I have not seen the coast yet, but I hope this will change soon too.

To round it off, I want to say that I am really happy to have chosen this university, to have been admitted here, and, thanks to Educa Foundation and my parents, to be allowed to learn new things and acquire new abilities and experience. I can’t wait for the years to come, as this is just the beginning of a long journey, which, apparently, will be rather quick in the end.