I Bought This! Photo A Day #1

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A couple of my Instagram contacts participate in a monthly photo-a-day challenge quite regularly and every time I see their photos (once the month is well under way) I think – oh I should do that some day! Let’s be honest most of the time I’m more operating under the motto “Ain’t no body got time for that!”  when it comes to self-imposed online chores (I will never be a level 100 FarmVille farmer…) but this is 31 days. I can do that! A fun project hopefully more than a chore! If you want to participate, Chantelle over here came up with the plan!

Today’s photo theme is “I BOUGHT THIS!”. Not having bought anything today made this one a bit challenging so I thought about what I had spent money on in the past that is still very significant for me…. My Coach purse that I got on super clearance (SCOOORE!) or my cute little German car that takes me to work every day came to mind. Even my sweet dog that I bought from a farmers couple. But in hind sight, some of the best dollars spent were on my MBA degree that brought me to North Carolina nine years ago.

My grad school experience has made me meet some of my dearest friends, introduced me to the wonderful city of Charlotte that I wouldn’t mind calling my forever home, given me tools to succeed in business, and last but not least has made getting my friggin‘ visas and hopefully eventual green card so much easier.

So yes, of course I would have preferred a free masters degree, but in hind sight, that was money well spent and in comparison to some other US grad school programs, that was actually pretty awesome deal. 🙂 Go Falcons!

 

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Graduation The German Way

No caps and gowns, just suits. So Friday was the graduation ceremony at my college. What a noteworthy event as me, my mom, my step-dad and my dad all drove down with my dad and spent the whole day together without drama. Haha! Nah, they’re always kind of civil of course.
We had some time to burn before the ceremony started so we had a cup of coffee at the cafeteria and then settled into our seats in the Mensa. Some uninspirational speaches from various professors and politicians (what relevance does the standardisation of the federal states’ school systems have to a university graduate?) and some skillfully performed classical music acts later my old math professor talked a bit. Funny anecdotes and I was totally reminded of how scared I was of him during the first semester. Horror! We all laughed at his little speech and then we got our degrees awarded. Jette and I were the only ones from my major and year but there were a couple of the bachelor students there who had shared some of the more or less fun classes with us in our 7th semester. Good times! We were all really happy and excited to finally hold this piece of paper that we had worked our butts of to get for 4+ years (ok so 5 but I didn’t really do anything towards my degree when I interned, did I?!).
After we had gotten our diplomas a fellow student gave another uninspirational speech but it was a nice summary of her time at the university. One more classical piece of music – this time violin and piano, a group photo and then we got to mingle and drink champaign sponsoerd by the university.
We got to see our main professor’s baby – soooooooo cute – and chatted for a while. I love my university. Everybody is like a big family there (more or less).
Anyway, we then drove back home and I invited my parents to the fancy restaurant in my village to say thanks for their sponsorship. Yummy! Expensive! Yikes!
So now I’m officially an alumni. Yay! I’m so proud of myself and uber happy as I’d never had thought to get a 1,5 diploma and that that still says “sehr gut”. Wheeeeee! 😀 [/bragmode]

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Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Yay! Big surprise! My professors have both graded my diploma thesis and – wow – I got a 1.7 from both of them (yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!) and I’ll actually be able to go to my graduation ceremony on Friday! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!! Super happy!!! Unbelievable!

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Diploma Thesis – Check

YES! - Day 161Yes, that’s me holding a copy of my diploma thesis! My fantastic ex-roomie sent me the final corrections yesterday and I started implementing them around 11pm and sent the file off to the printer this morning. Picked up three pretty hard-cover pieces of my brainy outpourings. Feels soooooooooo good to have it on paper and I can’t wait to send them off tomorrow. 🙂

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