Well this post is going to be short and maybe a bit boring. Last week was a break for students to concentrate on studying for the upcoming finals week. At Washington State University (my alma mater) students and professors alike fondly referred to this time as Dead Week. Whether that was because the campus was a ghost town or because students were silently dying among their books in the library, no one is quite sure. Regardless, I was very happy to see (what I understand to be a fairly American) tradition at the Frankfurt School.

Goldman Sachs

Even though it was a week of rest, I still managed to be invited to two smaller events at the FS. The first was a presentation and discussion about finance, politics and the industry’s expectations by a CEO of Goldman Sachs Germany. It was very interesting to see his perspective and to hear a bit of information that hadn’t quite trickled down to the masses yet.

Group Speaker Meeting

The second event for the week was another group speaker meeting with CEO, Professor Udo Steffens. As always, it’s interesting to hear from the other groups how their programs are going and how similar/dissimilar our comments and concerns for the school are.

Studying

When I wasn’t in attendance at either of the above events, I was, for the most part studying. If you remember from Week #4, I skipped three of my five introductory classes for this semester. This means that I now only have to take two finals which makes me the envy of everyone stressed out about the very challenging finals week schedule.

While this is nice because I don’t really feel overwhelmed, it’s also very stressful because I feel like if I’m only take 2 courses then I should be able to get really good grades in them (especially compared to those who had to divide their time between five courses). Oh well, there’s nothing to do about it now except to study, study, study.

Final #1

Although last week was Dead Week, the FS finals run from the 16th – 23rd which means that I had one of my finals on Saturday. The exam was for Financial Statement Analysis (AKA accounting) and went reasonably well. I’m pretty confident that I passed but how well I did after that is totally up to the graders and how willing they are to award partial credit.

Next week I am planning on meeting up with a friend from Darmstadt, taking my final test and then heading to another friend in Bremen for Christmas. I have about a month before I start work and I plan on using every moment of that to relax, explore, and enjoy winter-time in Germany.

Since my next post probably won’t be until next Sunday, I’ll take this chance to wish my family a Merry Christmas and all my friends and readers Happy Holidays.