What do I do on my spare time?

I have had this question a lot from my friends from Norway. What do I really do here? I can not work, I spend approximately 10 hours at school most days, and there is a budget limit for how much I can use. I think this is a great question, because I usually end up telling them: School.

And it is very much true. A normal weekday for me is usually school from between 9/10 AM to 7/8 PM. What I have not thought about until recently is how many hours I have spent on social activities at school. It is a lot. The nice thing about being at an international school is that no one else works either, almost all time is spent working with school or social activities connected to the school.

Unlike most schools in Norway, we have a different system for student organizations and clubs here. It can remind you of the set-up of the highly criticized social system of Norwegian School of Economics. Unlike that one, we have a highly functioning system with very little to no exclusion and with so many different clubs it is near impossible to not find anything that suits you.

The system consists of two different parts: One where there are class representatives (or HSA) that cooprates with the school, and one with clubs. Personally, I have participated now in nine different clubs, and even though it is somewhat time consuming in the weekdays to participate in it all, I think it is extremely educational and enriching to take part in. Some clubs are social, some are school-educational related and some are about changing your mindset.

Thursdays

How is it possible to participate in so many different clubs? In many cases, you can not. This Thursday I tried to do three different clubs at the same time. It was not really a success, but I learned a lot. At 15:45 I went to the Networking club who had successful alumni visiting and talking about how to get the dream job through networking. I sat there until 16:05, when I went to the Personal Development Club where I was supposed to be at 16:00. Here I Listened to Leon Williams-Boock with a very interesting life story, talking about how to reach your full potential and get what you want. After 25 minutes there I went back to the Networking Club to listen to the end of that session, before I was supposed to go to the Green Initiative club, which was supposed to start at 17:00. Might have been a bit late for that one.

And of course, as we usually do, we ended the day sitting at the school bar until late night. Just another ordinary evening for me at Hult. It looked pretty much like this:

How this Thursday looked like:

9-12 Future Mindset class

12-13 Lunch

13-15:30 Group work for International Marketing

15:45-16:05 Going to a Networking Club event

16:05-16:30 Going to a Personal Development Club event

16:30-17:05 Going back to the Networking Club event

17:05-17:10 Giving up on making the Green Initiative Club meeting

17:10- Go to Little Lingo to talk to people and being social

So do I spend a lot of time at school? Yes. Do I work considerably more than I have ever done before with school at school? Yes. Do I spend all my time at school studying? Far from it. As a social person like me that loves to interact with people, even though it is sometimes a bit stressfull, this is pretty much my favorite schedule.

Fun fact: The letter “E” is the most common letter in English.