Looking back, a lot happened. More than I expected, and more than I could have planned for. This is my honest attempt to make sense of it all.
When I first came to LBS, I arrived from Azerbaijan with one thing clearly in mind: a career goal I had been working toward for a long time. But if I am being completely honest, that was the only concrete thing I had, everything else felt uncertain. I did not know what London would feel like to live in. I did not know whether I would find my people here. I just knew the goal, and I held onto it.
What I did not expect was how much everything else would end up mattering more.
The early weeks were an adjustment in ways I had not prepared for. It was not the coursework that caught me off guard. It was the social environment. Walking into a room full of people who seemed completely at ease introducing themselves, moving through networking events with confidence, talking about their backgrounds as if they had been doing it their whole lives. In Azerbaijan, that kind of self-presentation is simply not a daily habit. You know the people around you. You do not walk into a room of strangers and pitch yourself to them. I had to learn it here, one conversation at a time.
I remember the orientation period clearly. Watching classmates introduce themselves, fluent and relaxed, and feeling the gap between where they were and where I was. Not a gap in intelligence or preparation, but in a very specific social skill that this environment requires constantly. It was uncomfortable. But sitting with that discomfort, rather than retreating from it, was the first real decision I made at LBS that mattered. I decided I could either let the year happen around me or step into it completely.
One of the things I am most grateful for is how the year pushed me in directions I had not planned. I joined the Running Club with almost no running background. The first sessions were humbling, but there is something about moving through a city with other people who are also pushing themselves that makes it easier than doing it alone. By the end of the year, I had run over 100 kilometres with LBS friends. Those runs were some of the most genuine conversations I had all year. Being tired together strips away the professional polish and lets you have deep, and real, conversations.
The year was full of things I would not have done on my own. I hiked the Seven Sisters with dozens of classmates on a cold morning that felt like one of the best days of the whole year. I travelled to Vietnam on the Global Experience programme and rode motorbikes through the streets with people I had known for only a few months but already trusted completely. I played in a band with the Music Club. I raised money for charity with the Volunteering Club. I went bowling, swimming, to late-night study sessions, to dinners that ended well past midnight. None of these were on my original list of goals, but all of them were essential.
I also grew through giving back. I became a Student Ambassador and spoke with hundreds of prospective students across more than ten events, trying to be honest about what this year asks of you. I sat on panels for the students, helped teammates prepare for their interviews and assessment centres, and was selected as a final recipient of the Alumni Council Honours List from a pool of 320 students. That last one surprised me. It felt like a reminder that you can contribute meaningfully to a community even while you are still finding your footing in it.
I also had the privilege of meeting the family behind the Pentland Scholarship that made this year financially possible for me. Sitting across from someone who has built something significant and still chooses to invest in people they have never met is not something you walk away from unchanged. It made me think about what I want to do with the opportunities I have been given, and what generosity looks like when it is practised seriously.
On the personal development side, the sessions and resources LBS offered were more useful than I expected. Learning to carry yourself differently, to make eye contact, to be present in a conversation rather than just getting through it, sounds like a small thing until you notice how much it changes. Friends noticed before I did. Conversations became easier and more genuine. I stopped performing confidence and started feeling it, which are very different things.
What the year ultimately taught me about myself is that I am more adaptable than I knew, and that adaptation does not require you to become someone else. I arrived quietly worried that my background would be a liability here. What I found instead was that the persistence and hunger that came with that background were precisely what the year required. I did not need to compensate for where I came from. I needed to trust that it had prepared me in ways that were not immediately obvious but were genuinely real.
Ten years from now, the friendships I made are the thing I will think about most looking back. People from dozens of countries who became part of my daily life in ways I did not see coming. We studied together, travelled together, ran together, and sat with each other through the difficult stretches. I came in hoping to make good connections, but I did not fully expect to make friends I will have for the rest of my life.
I arrived in London as a visitor. I am leaving as someone who lives here, and who wants to stay. That was not a goal I came in with. It became one, somewhere in the middle of a year that kept giving more than I asked for. I am grateful to LBS, to London, and to every person who was part of these ten months.