A Different Path

No other way to say this. I'm graduating a year early from Syracuse and going back to London for grad school. I fell in love with London when I was there, and I have to go back. I'm one of thirty five students in the Master of Digital Marketing program at Hult International Business School in London. (I applied without telling anyone in September and completed all the interviews while I was in London. I found out that I was accepted a few weeks ago, but I wanted to wait until I got back to Syracuse to make sure my early graduation was official before I told everyone. But now it's official, so I might as well share.) What's really cool is that after nine months in London, I will then rotate to Hult's campus in Shanghai for six weeks, and then Dubai for six weeks. I realize that I'll be missing out on a few things by not being at Syracuse for a fourth year, but I think that I'll gain so much more from a new experience.

I am very excited about the classes offered in my program because they relate specifically to the career I want to have. There are courses in International Marketing, Customer Service & Retention Online, Digital Publishing and Social Media Marketing; among many others. The program was just introduced last year, so it is very young and modern. However, I'll definitely be the youngest person in the program, with most of the other students being more than a few years older than me. It will certainly be a change from campus, and even very different from just doing an undergraduate semester in London, but I'm very eager to go.

I'm going to miss Syracuse an incredible amount, but I think that I'll have a greater appreciation for my short time there than most people. Now that I know that this semester is my last one, I plan on enjoying it as much as possible. I never thought I would get into Hult, so I wasn't ever planning on graduating early until I found out that I actually got in. Luckily, I was able to just do some shuffling with my advisor; we found that if I dropped two of my majors and my minor that I'd be able to graduate a full year early...sounds like a fair trade to me. (I don't really want to work in finance anyway...why was I majoring in it again?) Now that this opportunity has presented itself, I can't possibly turn it down. It will be a big change, but I'm so excited that I'm already counting down the days.