Start of the summer semester

I started my lectures again today after a sunny and wonderful weekend and yesterday’s flash high voltage. The beginning of lectures didn’t go very well. Here is the result from the second lecture I was supposed to have: (and truly, I was disappointed!)

I’m not totally sure which courses I’m going to take. Probably the courses in the list below, except one of them, which I haven’t decided yet… Yup, I would sometimes need an advisor to help with decision making.

• International HR Management (in German)
• Current Topics in Media Computing and HCI
• International Political Economy
• Advanced International Trade
• Market Entry Strategies
• Vortrags- und Präsentationstechniken (language course)

Grey Tuesday, yellow feelings

I’m now hopefully done with my winter semester exams. I’m slightly disappointed with the way I wrote my exams. I knew that I’ll have only a little time to write them, but I couldn’t change my exam writing behavior to go with the German exams and their requirements. In almost every exam, I spent too much time with the first question and hence had to rush with the other questions. I felt so sad and stupid that I had to write only something fast although I would have known the right answer explanation of which would have required more time :( and I cannot understand that being able to write fast is one of the grading criteria. Why?! I understand that it is essential to be able to handle data and solve cases fast, but having to really rush with writing seems stupid. Well, luckily I still have summer semester to improve my writing skills so that in my next exam I can write like a machine. (and yeah, I’ve already asked the university staff about the short duration of exams. The answer was “we require much from our students”.)

In spite of the small disappointment, I can still now enjoy long holidays, 6 weeks! :))) I haven’t had this long holidays during the studying years. It feels actually really weird. I haven’t make any big plans for the holiday, but instead came up with several small things that I want to do. Here is a list of them:

• wait for Hanne and her visit to Aachen, be and travel with her!
• go to see a big football game
• sleep late
• take afternoon naps <3
• go swimming
• go running a lot and find new places where to run
• finish reading the book that I started in September
• visit some other city in NRW than Aachen, Cologne or Düsseldorf
• visit a small and cute German village
• bake
• write an essay for my home uni which I should have done already last year. This isn’t actually a holiday thing, but it feels great to finally have time for finishing things that bother.
• listen to and find new music

I start my holidays by traveling to Frankfurt am Main with 3 Erasmus students today. It’s raining and it looks grey outside at the moment but it still feels great to do something different from mainly studying. Happy, happy!

Yesterday I took a camera to a pub. I’m not sure whether it was a good or bad idea. The camera usually has the potential of taking the main role of the evening.. Here are anyway some pictures.

Cheers for Tuukka’s last cheap weizen Monday

4 brunettes from 4 countries

Tuukka and Laura

Exams

It’s time of exams. Ugh. I already had two and have still two to do. After December’s terrifying exam experience, those two exams went actually rather nicely. I mean the exam situations, I’m not sure about the results. I didn’t panic and wasn’t actually nervous at all. It’s strange! However, I already knew that the time is very limited, meaning that I have to write really fast. That’s something I usually cannot do, but somehow I managed this time. The first exam was about human-computer interaction design patterns and the second about organizational design of multinational corporations, which in fact was quite similar to a course (=Prisma) I have done at my home university. I was surprised that before we started to write the latter exam, the exam supervisor told us what we would have to do if we got sick during the exam and which actions lead to failing the exam. German bureaucracy perhaps?

The next exam is in German, which freaks me out. I don’t have yet any idea how I’m able to write really fast in German about personal management. The terms related to the exam topics are however quite familiar to me, but my ability to write German fast or to explain complex things clearly is not that good yet.

Before the next exam, the Kölner Karneval (and Aachener Karneval as well) takes place. My costume for the carnival is not very special and the weather is going to be cold, but I’m anyway excited about it :) Pictures come later!