One Is The Loneliest Number (But Four Can Be As Bad As One)

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"My name is Luis, I am from Peru, and I am currently working on my master's thesis."

"My name is Denny, I'm from the Netherlands, and I am currently working on my master's thesis."

"My name is Lily, I am from Ukraine, and I am currently working on my master's thesis."

"My name is Christian, and I am from Belgium. I am actually different from everyone else--I'm not working on my master's degree." A huge sigh escapes my mouth. Finally, someone who is an undergrad! Christian continues, "I actually just finished my master's degree in January, got my stockbroker's license, and am starting my PhD in the fall."

OK, nevermind. It's my turn now. "Name's Chelsea. California. Babson." I say as quickly as possible. For once I'm estatic that no one has ever heard of Babson. Out of my seminar class of 15 students, I can't believe that I am the only one who is not currently working on my master's thesis or already done with it. It's going to be 6 more months before I even start working on my undergraduate thesis.

My finance class at the London School of Economics is by far the hardest class I have ever taken. I wake up at 7 AM, get ready and eat breakfast, do some last minute studying before my one hour class, eat lunch and then study a little bit more, attend my 3 hour lecture, grab dinner, and then hit up the library until midnight. By the time I finally go to bed I'm exhausted but I still feel like I have so much to learn.

The class is three weeks long, but it was divided into two 1.5 week sessions. Our first professor, Dr. Franz, was this French guy with a big afro. I won't describe the rest of his outfit online, but let's just say it was a bit of a distraction while listening to him in class. He kept saying that this is just a summer class and how we shouldn't be studying, that we should be enjoying London. I thought he was crazy because everything we were learning was new material for me, or taking material I had learned at Babson to a whole other level. I finally understand now that everyone else knew this material since they are all graduate students except for the few Americans in our lecture of 200 students including the four of us Babson kids who were crazy enough to take this class. I'm glad I have three other Babson students with me in the lecture because I feel so intimidated by my seminar class.

My only complaint of Dr. Franz was that it was hard at times to decipher what he was saying with his thick French accent. That is, until we got Professor Julliard. Will and I spent the first class arguing about whether he had an Italian accent or a Russian accent. Whatever it is, we are pretty sure that every three sentences is not English.

All of that said, I would take this class again. I feel like we are learning a lot of useful material, even if it is cramming a whole semester into just three weeks. And even though I'm missing out on doing fun things my last three weeks of London, I still have 10 more months abroad so I am in no rush to sprint the whole way through my study abroad experience. Our Babson friends who are not in our class have no homework and frequently comment on the fact that we are wasting our last three weeks in London, but I don't really mind. Out of the four of us in the finance class, two of us are studying abroad for an entire year and the other two are not from the states so they have been essentially studying abroad for the past two years. While London is an amazing city, I think the four of us are a little more calm in leaving London because we have so many more exciting adventures on our not so distant horizons.

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Photos

Starting Class
How Will and I start every lecture.

Studying for the Mid Term
We spent three days straight in the library writing formulas and doing practice problems on the white board.

Finally Done!
After we finished our mid term we went out for some Indian food to celebrate