So I Do Actually Study...

This past week, I received the request to write about my classes so here goes nothing:

Let's recap with the bidding process first. After I was awarded all 5 of the classes I requested during the first bidding round, I then bid on two additional classes during the second bidding round. I was only awarded one. So I bid again, trying to get a seventh class, giving me 24 ECTS. I didn't get it. Then began the waiting list rounds. During these rounds, I did not have to place any points on the classes I wanted; I simply selected them. At the end of the round, the computer system randomly selects students to fill the spaces of the class. I choose eight classes, hoping to get just one. I did not receive any. So I wait listed classes again during the second round. I did not receive any. Finally, during the third wait list round, after I had selected a total of eleven classes, I was awarded two. So a week after classes began, I finally had my 24 ECTS. I am thrilled that USC does not use the bidding system to allocate classes. What made the process even more difficult was the fact that I didn't really have anyone to explain it to me. But now I have all my classes and can start planning my class schedule for Fall 2014!

Turns out that all but one of my classes this semester are Masters courses, which is super fun. Below are the classes I am taking and a brief explanation about each of them.

Intercultural Customer Satisfaction:

This is the class that I was finally awarded during the wait list round. The professor seems extremely friendly and loves that his class is so diverse so that he can learn about all our different cultures. A lot of my exchange friends are in that class too, which is nice. They also all happen to be Americans. We only have two grades in the class, a paper and a presentation. I'm doing my presentation with my friend Brynne from Southern Cal on Nordstrom (an American company) vs Zara (a Spanish company). So I think I'll enjoy that class. This is also my only bachelor's class.

Global Leadership:

This class is four hours long on Tuesday mornings. The good thing is that it only lasts half the semester. This class is very discussion based: we talk about the many different leadership styles and look into quotes from famous leaders and really dissect what it means. It seems as though my friend Victoria and I have a slightly easier time discussing the quotes since we have a better handle on English than the rest of the class. I enjoy going to this class as well.

Insurance Operations:

In this class, we are discussing insurance companies. On the first day, we talked about AIG (an American company) and hurricanes in Florida. Go USA. The professor is extremely knowledgeable and does not simply read the PowerPoint slides. He also invited us all to the "Institute" for a bbq at the end of April. I'm not quite sure what the Institute is, but it has something to do with the Insurance department at the school...I think. The final is also the second to last week of classes, as opposed to the last week. It will be nice to finish it and have time to study for the rest of my finals.

Risk Management and Insurance:

This is definitely my least favorite class so far. The professor is very nice; however she deviates very little from the PowerPoint and speaks in a monotone voice. Apparently she only teaches the course for half of the semester and then someone else comes in after Spring Break. The only grade in this class is the final exam.

Financial Markets and Financial Crisis in Historical Perspective:

This class is held as a block seminar on three Saturdays and one Friday during March. I'm not particularly looking forward to sitting in class on the weekend while my friends are traveling, but at least it isn't a long class. I have a group presentation on the first day of the class too, so this should be interesting.

The International Financial Architecture:

This class is another block seminar, but it is held on three days during Spring Break.

Corporate Financial Management:

This class doesn't start until after Spring Break, but then it's three times a week as opposed to once. Apurva, another exchange student from USC, is in that class with me.

So to sum up, by the end of Spring Break I will have completed three of my seven classes, one will just be starting, and I will be continuing three of them. So although I do have some fabulous travel plans lined up this semester, I will be spending some time studying too!

Munich, Germany

So I love Munich and would absolutely love to go back there someday. I went with Kelsey and Apurva, both from USC, and Ryan from Boston. We left Friday around 1:30, and after sitting on a bus for 3 hours, we finally arrived in Munich!

By the time we found/checked into our hostel, it was getting late so we decided to wander around and find somewhere to eat dinner. We decided to go to the Haufbräuhaus, which is a touristy restaurant where all the waiters/waitresses wear traditional German clothes and serve traditional German food. It was definitely an experience! We also got to listen to a traditional German band while eating.

While wandering around, we also discovered Marianplatz. From my little knowledge of Munich, it seemed to be the shopping center. I wasn't about to make the guys wait for me while I shopped, so it was probably a good thing for my wallet that they were there! There were also some awesome old, historical buildings that we stumbled across. We weren't sure what they all were, but apparently this is the town hall. 

On Saturday, Kelsey and I took the train to Neuschwanstein. It's a castle built around the 1860s fro King Leopold, who died under mysterious circumstances before it was finished. Even though it was built relatively recently, it was designed to look like it was built in the 10th century. The inside decorations, especially all the colors used on the walls, were inspired by the works of German composer Richard Wagner. Neuschwanstein is the inspiration for Cinderella's Castle in Orlando's Disney World, which was really one of the main reasons I was excited to see it. The tour was very cool; unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside of the castle. The castle was about a 20 minute walk up the mountain from the little town, but we saw some amazing views on our way up! 

We got up early on Sunday to walk around and get good pictures of all the cool buildings we had seen while wandering around the previous two nights. We happened to come across some street performers who looked like they were straight out of Carnivale in Brazil. There were tons of drums and 2 dancers. I couldn't get close enough to get a great picture since there was such a crowd around them, but I did manage to get a few decent ones. My brother, Stephen, would have loved it.

We then walked to the Residences, which is where the kings and queens of Bavaria would have lived. The buildings are huge and very impressive, even from the outside! Close to the Residences was the English Garden, a 910 acre park-larger than Central Park in NYC and Hyde Park in London. I stumbled across a lock bridge and had to take a picture with it. 

Since it was such a nice day, tons of people were out running, playing soccer, bike riding, or just taking a walk through the park like we were.

At 12:15, we experienced the highlight of my day: a tour of FC Bayern Munich's stadium! I was literally in seventh heaven the entire time. We got to go in the player's locker room, see the pressroom, and even go (kinda) onto the field! Before going onto the field, the tour guide lined us up in two lines, just like the teams do, and played the official music for when Bayern Munich walks out to begin their matches. I can't even begin to put into words how incredibly cool it was. 

We then went to the Olympic Park, where the 1972 Summer Olympics were held. We were all so tired that we didn't walk around too much, but we did see the natatorium and the venue where the Opening/Closing Ceremonies occurred. BMW World, basically a BMW museum, was there too so we walked through that briefly. It reminded me of the Dream Cruise back home in Detroit, but I still got a few pictures of the cars on display. 

After a whirl wind weekend, I was very excited to come back to my own bed in Switzerland and get some rest. But I could not have asked for a better weekend and first trip out of Switzerland!

Grüezi!

The first 24 hours in Switzerland were possibly the toughest 24 hours I've experienced. Traveling from Detroit to Zurich was very easy. The Zurich airport was pretty quiet since we landed so early, and I had very little wait to check my passport. As I was heading towards baggage claim, a guy (agent? security? TSA?) said "Good Morning" to me in German. I was so startled by the fact that it wasn't English coming out of his mouth, and it truly started to hit me that I was in a different country where I do not speak the language. I followed a group of coworkers who had gotten off my flight (and were all speaking English) through the airport to the trains, where I successfully bought my ticket and got on the right train to St Gallen. I am so glad that I've traveled by train before in the US; when the woman walked by checking tickets, I didn't have to understand her Swiss German to know what she wanted. The conductor didn't announce each stop like they do on Amtrak, or the Metra in Chicago; however he did make an announcement before we reached the St Gallen stop. It was all in Swiss German and I didn't understand a word of it. Thankfully, a man offered to help me get my suitcases off the train. Again, I didn't understand a word he said, but his motions to my bag made it clear that he was willing to help. I'm certainly glad I learned how to say "yes, thank you" before I arrived!

Next, I had to go the Housing Office, which I had been told was only about 2 blocks away from the train station. Basically I went the long way and circled around the entire block before I found the office. Which wouldn't be too bad except my bags were so heavy and it's pretty hilly here (I think the word I'm looking for is mountainous). The women at Housing were nice and showed me the way to the buses and taxis after giving me my keys.

So I now basically walked right back to the train station where I planned to figure out which bus I needed, but I gave up and decided to get a taxi. Except I couldn't pronounce the name of my street and none of the taxi drivers spoke English. I was able to show, in writing, the name of my street to my taxi driver and he eventually figured out where it was. Like I said, he didn't speak any English or Spanish (figured I'd give it a try) and I barely speak Swiss German, but somehow we managed to have a conversation. He gave me his card so I can call him whenever I need him. Pretty sure I entertained him enough for the week.

After I unpacked my bags, I realized just how tired I was, as I had barely slept on the plane (we landed in Zurich at 1am EST). So not only was I completely exhausted, I had no food, didn't know anybody, and couldn't understand anyone. I also couldn't contact people at home because of the time difference. I felt so alone. 

Around 3pm I decided I needed to find food. Another girl from USC who is studying here, Kelsey, messaged me on Facebook and told me where some grocery stores are. I decided to trek down to the train station and try to find them. Alas, when I finally got to the train station (about a 20 min walk, not too bad on a nice day),  I couldn't remember where she had told me to go. I wandered around until I found what looked more or less like a sundry shop and bought enough food for the night. 

My  second day here was much better! One of my roommates, Sim, invited me and my other roommate, Luisa, to go to the Abbey and Abbey Library with some people from our building who she had already met. The Abbey/Abbey Library is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it was absolutely beautiful!

11 of us walked around town that day. I met people from all over; Italy, Canada, Germany, Spain, Hong Kong. Everyone is very nice and it has been easy making new friends. 

That night we went to Meeting Point, one of the student bars. If I'm correct, it's run by the university. So bizarre. I met up with Apurva and Stephen, two other students from USC who are here, and found out that Apurva lives in my building! There are actually a handful of Americans in my building, from South Carolina, Texas, California, Virginia, and me from Michigan.

Orientation was on Thursday and Friday. After 2 hours of presentations on Thursday, the university held an "apero." Basically food and drinks were offered in the lobby and everyone could mingle. Imagine my surprise when I realized that, at 3 in the afternoon, they were offering us beer and wine. At the university. Talk about culture shock!

As part of orientation on Friday, I went on a campus tour. After leading countless amounts of tours at USC as a University Ambassador, it felt odd being a participant on the tour! The town of St Gallen sits in a valley in the Alps and the university is basically up one of the mountains, so the views from the university are amazing. From one of the patios, you can even see Lake Constance! Austria and Germany are right on the other side of the lake. I didn't get a good picture of it; you can be sure I'll be back for one!

Yesterday I went with some students to Appenzell, a small town about 50 minutes by train from St Gallen. It was even smaller than St Gallen, which is hard to imagine. It was beautiful though!

I'm planning a trip to Munich next weekend, and booked a flight last night to London for Spring Break! Classes also start this week. Wish me luck!!

Bidding

Bidding is the system St Gallen uses to allocate courses to students, and is quite possibly the strangest thing I have ever experienced. I had a meeting with my business advisor last September to discuss courses I could take abroad. 2 credits at St Gallen translates to 1 credit at USC so basically I have to take 24 credits in order to transfer back to 12 USC credits. We selected 7 classes that I could take to earn my credits, as well as 3 alternate classes. The official Spring 2014 course listing was not available so we selected these classes from the Spring 2013 courses.


Flash forward to mid-January. Spring 2014 courses have been released and I am now sifting through all the classes, trying to find the ones I had selected with my advisor all those months ago, and making sure that the class times don't overlap. Many of my classes were scheduled as "block seminars" during the university's two-week Spring Break. Some of the classes I had selected were not even being offered again. Two days and many headaches later, I finally found 24 credits worth of classes that did not overlap, were offered in English, and could transfer back to USC as IB and Finance classes. 

On January 30th, the bidding began. Each exchange student is given 1000 points to place on the classes they want to take. I've learned from talking to St Gallen students that some classes are more competitive to sign up for than others. So while for some classes you may only need to bid 100 points to get in, others you might have to bid 300 points. Unfortunately, I had no idea which classes were competitive and which weren't. I decided to place more points on the classes I either really needed and didn't have an alternate for, or had only a few spots available (the smallest classes had 5 spots, the larger classes had 20). When the first round of bidding ended the following Wednesday (Feb 5th), I discovered that I had gotten all five of the classes that I bid on! I preceded to run around the house jumping up and down, I was that excited.  

Round 2 of bidding began that same day. Each round of bidding gets progressively shorter, so this current round only lasts until Monday the 10th. I also now only have 600 points to bid on my classes. The amount of points I have is determined based on how many points I had to use to get my first round of classes. (This is a bit confusing, so try to stay with me.) For example, let's say I bid 300 points on Corporate Finance, a class of 20 students. The students with the top 20 bids get into the class; however let's say that the student with the 20th highest bid only bid 100 points. I then receive 200 points back to use to bid in the next round since 100 points was the cutoff. Like I said, it's very confusing and I'm still figuring it out myself! I only need to secure 2 more classes to have my ideal schedule. I leave on the 10th for St Gallen so hopefully I am awarded these 2 classes and don't have to bid in the 3rd round! The five courses that I secured in the first round are: Risk Management and Insurance, Corporate Financial Management, The International Financial Architecture, Global Leadership, and Financial Markets and Financial Crises in Historical Perspective. 

This is my final post before I leave for Switzerland! Stay tuned for some interesting adventures from the other side of the Atlantic!