To Author's Page
The beginning of March usually marks the beginning of the second semester of our master studies. This time around, before the official start to the lectures, all of the Master of Finance students went to Luxembourg to attend some lectures and group dynamic activities.
The offsite started at the Frankfurt School campus where we all got together again after a long and cold winter break. It was a really good experience to see some faces I had not seen for a while, everyone seemed to be in a very good mood and some even decided to dress up in a very innovative way for the occasion.
The trip to Luxembourg took around 3 hours. Once we got to the hostel, we organized in our rooms really quickly and in no time at all we were ready to start with our activities. There was much to do in just two days and there was no time to be wasted.
We were divided into groups and during the course of two days we made a series of activities led by the Faszinatours group members, many of whom we already knew from the outdoor campus a few months back. This time around, the activities and the group dynamic was very different. The fact that we already knew most of the people in our group made the activities deal not that much with getting to know each other but on leadership and team work in real life scenarios. The activities dealt with group pressure and communication, important skills that we all most know how to handle correctly, no matter what type of industry we will be working in.
The trip to Luxembourg was not all about outdoor activities and struggling with the cold weather. We also took part in a series of lectures. The first lecture was made by Alumni who worked in different financial companies in the city of Luxembourg, as well as the Deputy CEO from “Luxembourg for Finance” who gave us all an insight on the importance of Luxembourg as a major financial hub in Europe.
The second lecture was led by Professor Dr. Hakan Lucius and dealt with the topic of sustainability in Finance. I must say that this was a very interesting and entertaining topic. When it comes to finance, you usually think about market, mergers and acquisitions. Your rarely stop to think on other aspects and how our knowledge in finance can be used to deal with such pressing matters as climate change and the environment.
Despite the number of events we had in such a small amount of time, we were able to spend some time walking around town. Luxembourg city is not a big city at all but it does carry some charm and a lot of history so it was nice to get to know a city which from a tourist’s perspective is not usually top of the list when you think of Europe.
The last day, before going back to Frankfurt it was time to suit up and get ready for a visit to the European Investment Bank. This visit, as well as the other lectures and activities we took part in showed us a different side to finance and made us realize that our field of study is much bigger than what most of us realize. The visit to the EIB gave us an inside look at how investment decisions within the bank are structured and what are the most important factors to be taken into consideration when evaluating a project. It was a very interesting lecture to end our short but busy trip to Luxembourg.
The second semester is the moment in our master studies where we start going more into depth into the different topics and subjects the compose the large and complex world of finance. The Luxembourg offsite experience was a very interesting experience in where we got to see how these different factors come to play in the real world, worked on the important subjects of leadership and teamwork and got to know even more our fellow master students, all this having in the background the cold but wonderful Luxembourg city.
Frankfurt School gGmbH
Adickesallee 32-34
60322 Frankfurt am Main
