The End of the Road

Tonight is our last night in Cambridge together. With finals behind us, and with most of us having completed our final papers, tonight has been a celebration of a truly great summer. We met Pavel for a drink at the Avery, a nice pub just off of Parker's Piece, before meeting our Cambridge Professor, Solomos Solomou, and his wife for a final group dinner at Brown's. It was a great opportunity to speculate on this year's Premiership winner, joke about the debate over Britain's infamous 2% growth path, and reflect upon our time together in Cambridge, the UK and Europe.
Tomorrow most of us will be heading back to the states. Some will stay to do some additional travelling, with family or independently. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that the Cambridge Economics Seminar is truly a wonderful, once in a lifetime experience, and that I would recommend it to any Carleton student, whether they are an econ major or not. If you are interested in going to Cambridge with this seminar in the future and would like to find out more about it, there is a list of students on the left-hand side of this page, and any of us would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

Bain, The Globe, and Alumni Dinner

With one week left in the UK, our group made one final trip south to London. Our first stop of the day was the London office of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm based out of Boston, Massachusetts. There we met with one of the partners of the firm, John Ott '81 P'07. He briefly explained what consulting firms do, what he does, and how he got there, before opening up for questions. We once again used this opportunity to get a better idea of how to prepare for and get into the business world.
After the Bain visit, we crossed the Thames for a nice South-American lunch on the south bank before proceeding to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for a matinee presentation of King Lear. The atmosphere at the Globe was incredible. The stage is open-air and a majority of the audience stands on the ground in the middle of the theatre. We were lucky enough to have seats in the upper circle, which gave us great views and better yet, protection from the rain. Despite the poor weather, the talented and determined cast pushed through and gave a spectacular performance.
After the show, we met a small group of Alumni at Zizzi, a British Italian restaurant, for dinner. This afforded us yet another valuable opprtunity to network, and to hear their collective experiences and advice.

UBS and the British Parliament

For our second-to-last excursion, during our second-to-last week of classes, we again hopped on the morning train south to London. Our first stop was the London office of UBS, a Swiss Financial Management firm, and the second largest bank in Europe. There we met with currency strategist Geoffrey Yu '06. He gave a short presentation consisting of an overview of UBS as well as his particular dealings in the foreign currency markets. The most valuable part of the meeting however was a candid discussion in which Geoffrey shared with us his experiences as a recent Carleton grad, and advice on how to best take advantage of all that Carleton has to offer to prepare us for potential careers in the financial world. Geoffrey was full of extremely useful and interesting information for us and we probably could have sat and talked with him well into the afternoon. Unfortunately, the finance world is a busy place and eventually Mr. Yu had to leave us.
After departing UBS and picking up a quick lunch, the group returned to Westminster for a guided tour of the British Houses of Parliament. It was was quite amazing to walk through a space with such a rich history, to see where the kings, queens and lords went about running the British Empire. We were not allowed to sit, but we even got to stand behind the benches in the House of Commons where we could only imagine the raucus atmosphere that must be present during a session. When we had seen all the guilded ceilings, churchill statues and Henry VIII portraits we could handle, we headed back up to Cambridge for an extravagant dinner at Pavel's house (Domino's Pizza), in honor of our guest, the professor leading the 2009 Cambridge Seminar, Radek Szulga.

Trains, Planes and... Cruise Ships?

        Well, here we are back in Cambridge after a week and a half on the continent.  Popular destinations included Italy, France, Germany and Spain, in particular the cities of Roma, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Amsterdam, among many others.  Some people travelled by plane, others by rail, and yes one group even took a cruise ship from Italy to Spain, but regardless of mode of transportation, the many great cultures of europe were experienced by all.  Unfortunately, there are too many stories for me to tell here, so you'll have to ask your friends/sons/daughters to share their individual experiences with you.