A reflection on the past year.

A year ago, in August, summer in California was coming to an end, and I was preparing for my move to Madrid to start graduate school at the end of that month, coming off of my bachelor’s graduation in New York just three months earlier. My emotions were flip-flopping between excitement and nervousness, just what you would expect. The day came and I made the journey from San Francisco to Madrid. I won’t make you read the whole thing before you find out how it ends. It was the best year of my life (not to be dramatic)!

Moving to Madrid alone, living by myself, and starting a Master’s Degree at one of Europe’s top international business schools when I had considered myself a design kid for the past 4 years was incredibly daunting, to say the least. As September rolled around and academic events started to kick off at IE University Business School (my uni, as the Europeans would call it), I started to feel that maybe everything was going to work out, and it did. Month by month, I started to feel as if Madrid was really becoming home. I had immersed myself into the culture, started to discover all my favorite spots (Alma Bakery, La Parra, La Alquimia and Masa Vins, The Thyssen Museum), and of course, most of my time was spent learning in class.

The academic setting at IE and my program, Master’s in Strategic Marketing and Communications, was challenging and demanding. The first couple of months were spent learning the foundations of marketing, communications, and business. I grew deeply connected to the people in my class, who came from countries all over the world, and I was fortunate enough to be put in a workgroup with people who taught me that projects could be enjoyable when you love the people you’re surrounded by. In the following months until the end of the year, our program officially started, and we dove further into topics such as Reputation Management to Strategic Marketing and Communication, Business Strategy, Creative Thinking, Global Markets, Business, and Media, and many more. As the new year began in January, I embarked on the second and longest term of the master’s program with a new workgroup team and I admittedly felt like a fish out of water. I was amongst a team of individuals older than me with years of work experience and I felt intimidated. This term taught me how to ask for help understanding a topic further, how to work on tight deadlines and across multiple discplines at once, how to be brave and pitch my ideas in meetings, and my presentational speaking skills grew significantly. Classes included (insert classes). Then came the third and final push, the thesis term. Here we delved deeper into topics such as (insert classes). For our thesis, we partnered with Roche Pharmaceuticals as our client two produce a two part marketing communications strategy and campaign relating to Roche’s oncology leadership and lung cancer prevention. I learned the most about myself this term, as I assumed the leadership role in my new workgroup. As a leader, I learned how to delegate tasks to each individual’s strengths, how to communicate in an effective and discplined manner in order to get tasks done, how to be proactive and organize projects ahead of time to lessen stress closer to deadlines, and most importantly how to be a supportive and collaborative teammate who strived to always stay positive and uplift those around me. Our final these presentation was a sucess and I could confidently say I finished the master’s degree more confident, knowledgeable, braver, and even more curious then when I had started.

Overall, life in Madrid, both academic and personal taught me the balance that is absolutely necessary to maintain contentness in life. That a walk in the park with a friend can almost certainly cure any issue, that tortilla after class on Wednesday night is essential, and that surrounding yourself with a community of genuine people who you look up to will always lead you to where you are meant to be. I will hold the many lessons I’ve learned and the people I met along the way close to my heart as I look to embark on my own next chapter in Madrid.

Until then, Gabriella