Sunday, December 29, 2013

This Is the End



First of all I hope all of you had great holidays so far and enjoyed the Christmas days. For me that always means spending time with my family, seeing my oldest friends again and tons of good food :-) 

Now the year 2013 is coming to an end. Every year I wonder where the time went and every year it seems that especially the period after the summer until the Christmas break flies by faster and faster. Next summer I will be done with my Master. By then I will be hopefully working in my dream job (whichever that might be), or travelling around the world. But before that I have enough on my plate: Finishing my last courses, mastering exams and writing the Master Thesis. However spending time with friends, eating well, going out (concerts, exhibitions, parties), watching movies and travelling should also be part of the agenda. I believe if you are well rested and having other influences (next to your study) , which stimulate your creativity, you are able to concentrate and to perform better.

The end of this year also marks the end of my blog entries. A student from another study will take over this task. I hope you enjoyed reading these entries and if you got anything out of it, let it be insights, ideas or advice, I see this work as a success.

Good luck!
Jana

Saturday, December 21, 2013

A Masters choice: Thesis Topic



During the last weeks I was busy coming up with a research topic for my master thesis and finding a suitable supervisor. Already at the very beginning of the Master we had a lecture about the procedure for the master thesis. Of course it is helpful to get these information as soon as possible, but at that moment you are more worried about finding your way around the university, getting to know fellow students and passing your courses. In general the idea is that you can hand in your own topic if you find a professor who supervises you. The other option is to choose a topic from a given lists from the university in around February. The deadline for handing in your own topic, was yesterday (17.12), so already around half a year before your actual research course, you have to think about it. 

The whole process for finding a supervisor can be very time consuming, so I say start early! In my case, I already had a supervisor, but unfortunately around 2 weeks before the deadline it turned out that I am not able to write under her supervision. So I had to start all over again: I asked my way around the professors I still new from my Bachelor study, but also approached some which I did not know. I would say the most difficult part is to find a supervisor, who has expertise in the area you are interested in and having an existing data set to analyze. Coming up with your own data might be too challenging for a Master thesis. I ended up with a research topic I am really interested in and I will participate in an actual lab research.  I will write about non-monetary incentives and their effect on corporate social responsibility.
So be aware if you start your master that soon enough you have to think about your thesis topic already. Don’t start too late, since complications can always occur and you need to change your plan of actions.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Career Day



 As you can tell from the absence of recent blog entries, the time-demanding requirements of my Master study hold me back from keeping you up to date.
The last weeks have been really eventful: There was among others the career day organized by ECU92, the study organization from the Economics faculty. The career day is offered to give you the chance to get in closer contact with a couple of interesting firms, talk to experienced employees and of course to network.
You had to sign up beforehand by sending in your CV and you could already decide what kind of workshops and lectures you wanted to visit. Furthermore it was possible to apply for personal meetings with the firms (e.g. ABN Amro, KPMG & SNS). The day started with a lecture by a young entrepreneur from Rockstart, which was a former UU student.  I thought it was great to hear the experience and advice from a very young person, who can relate to your situation. These kind of lectures are often very inspirational and can give you a better idea what is possible after your studies.
For the rest of the day I attended two workshops, one by a social entrepreneur and one from the “Belastingsdienst” (tax authorities). So you can shape the day according to your interests. In case you are not entirely clear on what you want to do after your studies, or if you are simply interested in meeting some interesting people, I definitely advice to attend the career day. And if that did not convince you, there is always a free lunch and nice goodies to take home J