My fall adventure is now officially to the home stretch. Most of the friends I made are gone, to rarely (if ever) be seen again. Now Vanessa and I are on the one big trip-with-in-a-trip in my 4.5-month adventure. Paris for 4 nights, Berlin for 3 nights, and Hamburg for 2 nights, then back to the CPH on the 29th. We will bring in the Danish New Year, and then hop a plane back to the old US of A on the 2nd. Which will land us in Portland at 5 pm just in time for a birthday party to push through the jetlag. Then the 2nd to last term of my MBA will kick off on January 4th, and the show will officially be over. What will be different? What have I really learned?

For starters, I learned that an adventure not pursued is an adventure not taken, and thus an experience not had. Throughout this term, and ideally in my life in general, I have tried to keep the larger picture of enriching my life experience in mind. With an uncertain time frame, we only get one pass at life and I aim to make it as worthwhile as possible. In the process of getting the details figured out for my fall in Copenhagen there were many hurdles which made this amazing experience often appear out of reach, as it was not a turnkey operation by any means. To satisfy the transfer of credits, to not harsh my progress through the program, I had to get a bit creative to make this all happen. I had to first define an ideal plan for me, then tweak the plan to satisfy all prioritized parties, and lastly to work all the details out. Had I focused on any of the various hurdles along the way I could have easily been dissuaded and scrapped the whole effort. This process further entrenched my belief of a similar strategy as I continue to turn the pages of my life. Specifically it allowed the experiential highlight of my trip, the opportunity to do my business project in Copenhagen to learn first hand about different Scandinavian perspectives taken in business management and operational leadership.

Beyond the lessons of the process, I learned that Copenhagen is a beautiful old city where I was just getting to have my personal favorite nooks and crannies lined out, which I expectedly grew quite fond of. Vanessa seems to like it fine from her shorter exposure, and at the very least, it has not been eliminated from the short list of places where we would happily live for an upcoming chapter of our life.

Perhaps most importantly, I redefined what it means to live on my own, without my seemingly ever-present covey of close friends and family close by, influencing my day to day path and interactions. I was able to step off of my established social conveyor belt, which has come to largely define who I am and what I do, allowing a series of why’s into the equation. A level of social inertia invariably breeds a level of complacency, which I was allowed to step away from, if only for a moment. I learned to miss and further appreciate my friends, family, and mostly Vanessa as I could see the gap of interaction that was missing from my day to day life without them, and specifically her. On the other hand my self-confidence and intrinsic need to take reflective steps back were greatly affirmed in this journey, and it has been a much appreciated opportunity and amazing experience to help in the continual redefining of who I am as I finish school, get married, make a career, and continue writing my story.