It's a really good university.
It's a monolith of knowledge, has a very rich culture, is very well-known for academia and I wanted to come to England to experience it and diversify my way of learning. I’ve found that the US schooling system is really different from the UK education system, and I’ve been able to benefit from that dynamic.
At Oxford Brookes
They give you the tools to be able to substantiate your own argument. This is still a challenge though; they want you to have your argument. They want you to have counter arguments. They want you to look at things from a 360 degree view, and I like it a lot because it allows you to actually learn and not just memorise. Before I came here, I didn't actually get the chance to truly learn on a deeper level like I have at Oxford Brookes.
The best module for me
Was Global Strategic Management (GSM), and we actually had a written exam for this module. I haven't taken a written exam since I was a teenager. I will not lie and say that I enjoyed it, but it was so helpful. I am currently working part-time, for Abbott Diabetes Care, and I have applied my learning to the different things the companies have to go through, especially medical companies. For example, having your manufacturing in one place where you can manufacture it cost effectively, and then sell it at a higher price in different countries. This module opened up my eyes, I found out how it all works. I think for the rest of my life I'll be able to use the things that I’ve learned to explain things or elevate myself in a work environment, to benefit my career.
The tutors are great, they often say….
“come to me during my office hours, you know my schedule”, but they're literally always available. They make it really easy to do your best. They're always ready to be communicated with. I’ve found they’ve taken their time, when we’ve been discussing something, I've never felt like I was pestering them. So that's really cool too.
The cohort is awesome
Everybody is amazing, we help each other out. We have a big WhatsApp group where it's all of us, about a hundred other students in there as well and we all just like to share perspectives, or we'll send each other things like business or stock news or just complain about the weather. Many of the cohort are from India and when they were on the course it was the first time they had seen snow, so the group chat was quite busy then. It's also cool to be around a lot of people where there is positive competition. We're all trying to do our best and everybody here is really smart. So, you think, “I don't want to be the one left behind”, so we all push each other to do our best. Everyone is friendly. I live in Witney, so sometimes I’ve crashed overnight after a late lecture at a classmate’s place. Everyone is really cool, especially the January cohort, which is the cohort that I'm a part of.
I want to open up my own consultancy agency
I like solving problems. As part of our entrepreneurial theory class, we had to interview entrepreneurs. A particular entrepreneur that we interviewed created a consultant agency for technology. One of the main things that he said is to get work experience. He had about ten years of work experience doing these things for a company. Once he had built contacts and built up confidence in his skills, he thought, “I could do this for myself”, I was like, “I want to do that too”, so that would be the main thing that I want to do. But as of right now, hopefully my contract gets extended to full-time once I’ve completed my course. I want to gain experience and then just do my own thing because I like the idea of freedom. I like the idea of working very hard at the beginning, positioning yourself up to where you can have that freedom and then be wherever you want to be. So that's my goal. God willing I will hopefully graduate, hit the ground running, put in a couple of solid years of work and then figure out how I can do something for myself in my own consultancy agency.