What you need to know:
Cost: £110, food and seafront hotel included
Duration: Friday – Sunday (2 nights)
Timing: Early October
People: Department of Finance students and faculty
Activities: Treasure Hunt, Casino Night, Formal Dinners, nightlife, general shenanigans
Every year, the Department of Finance hosts the annual grad trip to Brighton. This is a great opportunity to relax and get some fresh air, because by the time you’re one month into the programme, you’re going to need it. Despite what I said before about being a career-oriented bunch, the truth is that burn out is real. Also, it might be a good idea to actually get to know those people who hang out in your peripheral vision for 3 hours a day in class.
First thing’s first, the trip is heavily subsidized by the department. One does not have to be a finance student to guess where this subsidy might come from. This is to say, you owe it to yourself to go to Brighton (yes, YOU, future student of the department).
Cynicism aside, Brighton was a blast. But don’t take it from me, here are what some people who loved the Brighton trip despite getting sick from the nasty Norovirus going around (seriously, we were told to stay home if we felt sick for the entire week afterwards):
“Had a brilliant time, if anything the illness brought us together more as a group. In true team building spirit, we went through good times and bad times together in Brighton” – Isaac
“I see the whole getting sick thing as equivalent to a terrible hangover after a great night out. You feel absolutely terrible but you don’t regret it whatsoever because you had so much fun!” – Jessica
“It was good fun.” – Marco
“Yes I did get a little bit sick [one of the symptoms is projectile vomiting] but I don’t regret going” – Boris
My favourite part of the trip was the Treasure Hunt. For three hours, you are grouped with 5 other grad students to do interactive Brighton trivia, photobomb strangers, and re-enact scenes from James Bond. The strangest part was that it didn’t feel out-of-place at all, to run around town with people you barely know, completing strange tasks. We named our team Kicking Assets and our all-star line-up consisted of:
- TC: the part-time MSc Finance student who used to run his own IT company in California;
- Sun-Yong: the Korean-Australian who is taking a break from applying to 35 (THIRTY FIVE) PhD programs;
- Myself: not very interesting;
- Lorenzo: another classmate who shared with us his surreal exchange experience at Ohio State during the tragic stabbing in 2016;
- Ying: the MSc Risk & Finance student who threw caution to the wind in the name of our group photos;
- Florentin: a fellow MSc Finance classmate with a hidden talent for beat-boxing, as we all discovered
Other cool stuff
Brighton Pier Carnival
Wow, this guy can shoot!
Hotel Room
Clubbing with Jasper, the immortal gatekeeper to our dreams
Sunset by the Pier
