Just as fast as the first half of my internship flew by, so did the second. I finally felt like I was settling into the daily work routine, and my last day of the internship arrived.

The second half of “Singapore” was quite unspectacular. After my little trip to Ho Chi Minh City, my parents came to visit. The city started to feel more and more like “everyday life.” Since I had already visited the most important attractions, my sightseeing was mostly done. More about this in my next blog post.

As indicated in my previous blog post, my internship allowed me to work from the Ho Chi Minh City office for a week. Of course, I couldn’t pass on this opportunity, so I extended my stay in Vietnam a little longer to see the city and its surrounding areas.

This Wednesday marked the end of the first half of my 11 weeks in Singapore. The really interesting part? At that time, I was in Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam. Later I will tell you how that happened.

Looking back, it is a bit crazy how everything has developed. A year ago, I had just accepted the fact that I would be moving to the US for two years. But did I imagine that I would be spending the next summer in Asia? No, for sure not!

This year marked the sixth year of the Turner Impact Portfolio Challenge (TIPC). It is an ESG investment competition for students that takes approximately six months and is organized by the ESG Initiative at the Wharton School. The event is sponsored by Bobby Turner and Bank of America. The goal of the competition is to increase interest in sustainable and impact investing across all asset classes. 175 students (in 40 teams) from 16 universities across the U.S participated in the competition this year.

Now, faster than I expected, the semester is already over. After the competition in Philadelphia, I continued with the preparations for my exams, and by the beginning of May, everything was over, and the first academic year was completed. It passed incredibly fast. Of course, it hadn't been a whole year, “only” nine months, but we don't have any lectures until the beginning of September — which is three months away.

It has been a long time since you've heard from me, and I finally found the time to update you on my life.

A lot has happened since the new semester started. Initially, lectures and the final sprint of the Turner Impact Portfolio Competition (TIPC) kept me well occupied. The deadline for the competition was on February 25, 2024. A lot of this work disappeared afterward.

After completing my exams, I flew back to Germany on December 22, 2023. Fortunately, my flight went smoothly, and I could spend Christmas with my family. After all the stress of the exam period, we spent a few days in Austria to end the year in a relaxing way and spend New Year’s there as well.

Even though this is the second post in a very short time, I want to reflect on the past year and all the changes it has brought me. And there were a lot of them! One year ago, I hadn't even applied to Fletcher, and now I have already completed the first out of four semesters.

Honestly, all I knew at the beginning of January was that I wanted to start my Master's degree. I already had a rough idea of the curriculum, but everything else was still written in the stars. Finding the perfect degree program isn’t easy.

On Friday, while waiting at Boston airport for my flight back to Germany, I spent the time reflecting on the second half of the semester.

Contrary to my initial expectations, things didn’t slow down after mid-terms. After New York, we went straight on with new group projects (for example, in my case, a stock valuation of Peloton or the creation of our own portfolio). Then, the exams were just around the corner, and the semester was already over.

Everything started on September 04, 2023, and ended 2 months later, on November 03, 2023, in New York during the Cornell Emerging Markets Institute Conference and the 2nd place for the “Fletcher Frontiers”.

During our orientation week at Fletcher, Molly, Anthony, Desmond, Tom and I decided to take part in this year’s EMI Cornell competition as a team and registered in time for the Early Birds deadline (09/04/2023).

Just like many other international students, I have a list of different activities that I would like to experience during my two-year stay in the United States. Among other things, there is one basketball, ice hockey, baseball, and football game on my list. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to attend one of those games four weeks ago and was able to check it off my to-do list. I attended my first live NFL game. Sadly, I haven’t been able to remember the rules since high school and therefore I needed some basic explanation.

Sadly, you haven’t heard from me for a while now, but every new start is difficult. That’s how it was with my first weeks of lectures, too. But before I go into the details of the first few weeks, I would like to introduce you to my schedule.

Without a break, the orientation week transitioned into the move-in, because the lease for the apartment started on September 1st.

Since the beginning of the whole apartment search I was aware of the fact that I will not find an affordable apartment that meets my German standard and accordingly I already adjusted my expectations.

​Anyone who has ever attended an orientation week or even just one event of this kind knows how exhausting something like this can be. Information upon information stuffed into you like there’s no tomorrow. Fortunately, my orientation sessions at TUFTS University were paused by coffee and tea breaks or other activities.

As you might have expected, the last few weeks before my departure were very exhausting. There was a lot to do and to organize. But somehow everything worked out and on Tuesday it was finally time: The flight was just around the corner. All things from the apartment were either packed, stowed away or unloaded at my parents' place.

My name is Charlotte and I am 23 years old. Currently, I still live in Frankfurt am Main, which is in Germany. However, starting this September, I will be studying at Tufts University – or more precisely at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and join the Master of International Business: Quantitative Methods (MIB:QM) program.