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Malika

January 30th, 2013

Holiday, Break and Vacation

0 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Malika

January 30th, 2013

Holiday, Break and Vacation

0 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Back to School! However you called the four last weeks, the rest is over and you have no time to re-adapt. Be mentally prepared, this term has even more to offer than the last!

I suppose the four weeks LSE students have for Christmas are typically spent as follows:

  • A week in London to catch up on the first term’s reading (or rather: to sleep, see Big Ben at last, and meet with friends)
  • Travel home, catch up with friends and family, eat too much, sleep too much, party too much, and forget to update the CV
  • Spend long hours writing application forms for the next summer’s internship
  • Spend the last week-end writing essays due on the first day of the second term

Christmas time is probably busier than term time if you’re an LSE student, and even if you felt you’ve slept too much, you will still be tired on January 14th. But don’t complain: most London universities actually start one week before us!

I can remember my mentor telling me in my first year: ‘no one expects you to do anything over Christmas’. She was probably right when it comes to Freshers. But for the others, it is the only time you can spend looking for and applying to internships and jobs, or even postgraduate programmes. I would have warned you! Lent Term is usually busier than Michaelmas because you have more essays (and also because you’d have by now understood that you should do the reading during the term, as you won’t have time to catch up on everything during the Easter break).

More interesting though is hearing about your friends telling you about Christmas on the beach in Australia, New Year’s Eve in Thailand or Morocco, and comparing your complaints about temperature with Russians or Nordics. For my part, I enjoyed the stillness and emptiness of Christmas day in London, and trust me, it’s a unique experience not to see any buses, cars or pedestrians in this usually so lively city! The anticlimax after the buzz of the first weeks of December is as enjoyable as it is unexpected. But London retrieves its usual rhythm as soon as the shops open on Boxing Day, and the pause is short-lived.

About the author

Malika

BSc International Relations

Posted In: LSE | Off Campus

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