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| First time at CBS |
One of the
things I told myself I would do before coming to Cologne was “This time I will
concentrate 100% in my studies” That means I thought I would just hang out with
a few people and then coming back home every day to review what I learned each
day in class. We can have expectations about something but when you start
living it you realize that things won’t work out exactly as you wanted.
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| Introduction Week |
I don’t have
family in this city. I come from a country where family is the most important;
we stick together no matter what and celebrate together everything. I didn’t
realize how important was my family to me until I was living alone in a 23m2
flat, not having someone to share my day or to ask for advices. That’s when
friends play an important role. It is true that friends are the family we are
allowed to choose. Once I met my CBS friends I felt like I was creating a new
little family.
The good thing
about CBS is that you don’t feel alone as International Student; you are with
people that like you travelled thousands of miles to be here, who also don’t have
family in the city, so you also have people experiencing the same things for
the first time. There aren’t so many students in a classroom comparing to
bigger Universities which makes it easier to know each other.
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| Oktoberfest |
The first weeks
you don’t think so much in the studies, you think more about going out, making
plans for the weekend, knowing the city and knowing new people. You plan trips
outside Cologne, even outside Germany. You think about Carnival, Oktoberfest
and all those traditional German events. Everything is new, exciting and you
want to experience as much as you can.
But you reach a
point where you ask yourself “When I am going to start studying what I learn in
my lectures? When I am going to start with my course works?” You begin to worry
and stress because you feel you lost so much time having fun or busy in other
staff that you won’t have time finishing them. You think about your 4
presentations, your 4 course works, the thousands of words you have to write
and the final exams. I started feeling stress but then I realized that feeling
that way won’t help me. I just needed to organize my time, work in my course
works a few hours each day until I’m done.
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| Reading, reading, reading... |
I am the kind of
person that struggles every time I have to start studying or start writing a
course work. I have to confess I am lazy for reading; I get distracted too
easily so it takes me time to finish and really understand a chapter of a book
for my course works. But once I start
and really focus on it I work fast. Once the reading part is over, writing gets
much easier. Setting goals also helped. For my 5000 words course work I told
myself I should write at least 500 words each day. In the end I wrote more than
500 a day and finished it in less than a week.
Something I
remember from our CBS welcome ceremony is that they told us to balance our time
between studies and fun. To be honest, I was not doing a great work balancing
because I was more focused on the fun part at first. So at the beginning of
November I started to focus more in the studies but I also wanted to meet my
friends and for sure I wanted to celebrate 11.11. So the days before carnival I
worked as much as I could so I would not worry while celebrating.
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| 11.11 |
11.11 resulted
one of the best experiences I lived in Cologne so far. Breakfast with friends,
wearing costumes, walking around the streets talking to random people, admiring
or making fun of other costumes, walking through a sea of people and dancing
for hours. I am glad I did not miss it. I am looking forward to keep celebrating
with my friends in February.
Sometimes I wish
I could be the smartest and most dedicated student in the world but then I stop
working on the papers if I see messages from my friends to have dinner or from
a close friend telling me to hang out at her place for a while and I think “I
can continue later, I need my time with my friends” The key is to be constant
with your work, set your own goals and comply them. That worked for me and I
can spend some time with my friends.
My idea at the
beginning was to focus 100% in the studies but now I would not change how
things developed in the end. I might not become the best student at CBS but I
will do my best to be a good one and keep alive my new friendships as long as I
can.
