Ryu's Blog

My 1st term in Cambridge finally ends.  The term’s only two months, but it seems like a long time for me.  Lots of topics have been covered in this short period, and I’ve spent most of my time studying and doing assignments.  The economics course’s rigorous and every week there’re three tough assignments to submit. The stress level can be phenomenal especially when I don’t have a clue on how to do those assignments.  Although I learned a lot this way, I felt that I need more time to consolidate what I learned and to fully absorb the materials.  So far I haven’t found the teaching here particularly useful or enlightening, but I’m not in the position to give my definitive judgement on it yet.

Besides studies, I’ve also attended a few concerts and parties,  played in the Wolfson basketball team, and took a few dancing lessons. But since I was quite busy during the term, there wasn’t much free time to socialize.  So it’s great that in the past week I finally have chance to get to know some of my friends and classmates better.  Several Thai friends cooked Thai food and invited me over, and I also got treated Japanese foods from a nice Japanese couples (good foods really make life so much better). A few days ago people in my course had a gathering, and I found that there’re many cool people in my class:  we got a great cook,  mathematical genius who enjoy spreading his communist manifesto around, and a philosophy graduate who see world in very interesting way (I just had several nice discussions with him over beer).  I’m looking forward to know more of them better.   One memorable experience in this term’s meeting my primary school classmate in a consulting seminar.  I’ve lost touched with my Hong Kong friends and  never thought that I’ll meet any of them again.  So it’s interesting that we’re able to remember each other after 12 years (she recognized my name) and also studying the same subject in the same university. Isn’t life interesting, you never know who you’re going meet and under what circumstances.

Overall I’m satisfied with my life here.  Cambridge’s a nice place with lots of learning opportunities and interesting people around.  Although teaching is not as good as I expected, it’s still way better than where I studied before, and the resources available here are very good.  For the coming term, I hope that I’ll be on top on my studies and feel less pressure than what I experienced this term. For that to happen, I probably need to use this Christmas vacation wisely.