tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7343684646405386102024-03-12T20:49:25.344-07:00USE study blog - Utrecht UniversityWebkeyuser rebohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07316593257072326852noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-21497703496281846152015-07-11T06:24:00.001-07:002015-07-11T06:43:50.525-07:00Overall -Economics of Public Policy and Management<div class="MsoNormal">
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With my well known good organizational
skills and in the best of Italian traditions, I end up writing the blog that I
was postponing for months on the plane which brings me back to Rome, after one
year in the Netherlands. But this context, with the landscapes passing below
the plane which brings me home, may suit particularly well to an overall
reflection on the master that just concluded.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeVqa57MRbIsLeiDXdmmBcj33E5zzd4MCawtg7Fzri4uYjIoEU811lGq5cOAoXDn-VuI1GUQGllatqVQXGIfG6luVBi-RYOFc1XaSK5_mY0hNE3rADLTaf_JNBLUEq7fW9TVFlbucENlI/s1600/20150710_184729.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeVqa57MRbIsLeiDXdmmBcj33E5zzd4MCawtg7Fzri4uYjIoEU811lGq5cOAoXDn-VuI1GUQGllatqVQXGIfG6luVBi-RYOFc1XaSK5_mY0hNE3rADLTaf_JNBLUEq7fW9TVFlbucENlI/s400/20150710_184729.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Overall, I really think that Utrecht and
Utrecht University gave me lot, and I
should thank both for that. For sure –and to be a less more poetic and a bit
more practical-, USE gave me far more than what I paid as a tuition fee. 1.900
euros for all I have received during this year, all the attention, the small
courses, the events, initiatives, opportunities, infrastructures, contacts and
services was indeed a very small price. Just to give a comparison: the Italian
partner of USE in Italy is LUISS University in Rome, whose masters cost around
15.000 euros per year, if I remember well. Utrecht University has the same
level of service, but a price more than 7 times lower. I took advantages of
these services and of this price, so thank you to Utrecht University and thank
you to the Dutch state for that.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">But even if we study economics, we can talk
about different things than money. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">One of this is people. The people I met
during my courses, the friends I spent my evenings with, the faltmates, the
colleagues and friends from the internship, the professors, the friends from
the library, the friends from parties, the old friends who came to visit me,
the PhD students who inspires you and the supervisors who support you, and
Laura who involved me in writing these blogs, which will be a nice souvenir of
my year. All a crowd of people, professionals and friends, who populated these months in the country of low
landsacpes, making my master a rich, intense, multifaced and collective human
experience. So I thank them all, thank you my new friends that I hope to
maintain across the years, thank you professors who guided my first steps in
the magic realm of public economics.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Besides people, there are objects. Like the
bikes: one of the absolute protagonists of the life in the Netherlands, loyal
support of students in work and fun. And I would say that this year has litterally
passed at the joyfull rythm of cycling, which brings you from Utrecht
Overvecht, to Neude, to the Campus, and back. And one of my best souvenirs of
the year are indeed the evening in which with our group of friends, in a storm
of bicycles, joyfull after a few beers (but remember that
it is forbidden to bike then), we moved in the Dutch nights from someone’s
place to a bar, or to another bar, sometimes even singing. Another object is my
student number and password, that I typed again and again every day, up to the
point that I think it will graved in my memory untill the end, so that when I will
look my grand children paying I will istinctively murmour among myself
“4249968…”. And the light Dutch beers at 2,5 euros per small glass. And
Albert Hein with their blu signs and
terrifying absolute-monopole prices. The library in Drift, and Jankerskof, and
the brootje Carlo. And the laptop, which accompanies you during all the long
nights working on papers. And the rain, that swift constant companion of us all
in the Netherlands, always present with its wet caresses remembering you that
the you are still doing your master and that Rome is far. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Was it usefull this master as to my
formation in Public Economics? </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Indeed. I can’t know if it missed teaching me
something that I should know, but I know that almost all I know is what it did
taught. My only suggestion, as to my specific master programme, is to add <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>maybe a course in
finance, since I think that economists working for the government should have a
sufficient knowledge of the finance sector, if anything to be able to regulate
it. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Would I suggest my master programme to a
student fresh from his/her bachelor and maybe coming from abroad? If you don’t
desperately need the sun as a source of joy and life, and if you feel ready to
live among people whose average height is not far from 190 cm, yes. And of
course, if you are interested in Empirical Economics, since it remains one of
the main focus of USE as to my impression, and I think this is reasonable and
fair. Overall, I think you should really
give Utrecht a try. </span></div>
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Francesco Rossi Salveminihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17956856367273993100noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-71716408445208780862015-02-16T07:39:00.000-08:002015-02-16T07:39:14.223-08:00A fluid opalescent mosaic –The studying life of an international master student<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">I see, the
intervals between my blogs exponentially increase, like the vertical distance
between the points of a heteroskedastic distribution as x grows. Maybe each
time I need more effort to summarize experiences from a longer period! But
let’s focus on the topic of today. The second period is already over, and we
are already deep into the third block, composed by the two optional courses.
Therefore I now have an image quite clear of how weeks tend to look like for a
master student of the Utrecht School of Economics, since my impressions begin
to be statistically significant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">First, let’s talk about
the attendance required from a master student at USE. Both for the master in
“Economics of Public Policy and Management” and the four tracks for
“International Economics and Business”, students have typically two courses per
block; each course requires two meeting of two/three hours per week, usually
organized as one lecture and one tutorial. The attendance required is therefore
not much: students officially have to stay at USE only 8/10 hours per week, and
they will have to go to the campus for a maximum of four days per week, which
can be even three or two if they are lucky on how the courses are organized. Nevertheless,
attendance is only a small part of the effort required: apart from studying,
each course typically requires a group paper, and usually there are also weekly
assignments to prepare, while more than one course needs tutorials to be
prepared by groups of students. As a consequence, in the end the week of a
master student becomes a composition of floating meetings and appointments that
tend to concentrate and to amass around the four blocks of required presence at
USE. I will speak mostly about international students, because Dutch students
have already lives and works started in Utrecht and tend to follow different
dynamics (just to give an idea: in our master we are about 5 international
students over around 20 students –numbers change at each course- the same
proportion holding more or less also for the tracks of International Business).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Typically, courses
start at 11 am, apart from Econometrics in the first block that begins at 9 to
fully exploit the morning. 11 is a time which divides the morning, and it is
even too easy to simply use it to sleep longer so that the morning is basically
lost. But don’t worry, each lecture or tutorials usually requires some readings
(manual chapters, or additional articles), so very rarely everything is done
with such advance that we don’t need that couple of hours before the course to
finish reading or preparing some material. After the course, you’ll have lunch
with your master’s friends in the Adam Smith Hall (this big hall in the main
USE’s building, where it is possible to eat, talk and work, and where such a
big part of our days is spent), by buying something in the (not so expensive)
cantine or bringing something (pasta!) from home. Since we are already there,
we then stay in Adam Smith to meet with the project group in order to organize
or do the work. After a couple of hours, the groups typically dismiss, but
several of us usually remain to work or study in Adam Smith Hall. These are
nice hours, because you can remain working with your friends, talking and
having breaks together, while all the life of USE goes on around you, because
the Hall is the very core of Adam Smith building, and while you work master
students of all tracks, professors, staff members, hosts, phd and young
researchers are passing by. Every body is more or less busy, more or less
accompanied, and groups compose and decompose while you cross all the time people
you know and talk with or just say hello. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The afternoon is
often interrupted by feed-back meetings with your professors or with the phd
students who supervise your group work, or by the events organized by USE –for
instance every second Thursday the USE academy organizes interesting two-hours conferences
with guests involved in different fields, to which all master students are
invited. Once in a while also some special events or career-days take place,
while some courses organize field trips or special conferences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Before and after
these meetings, studying in the Adam Smith Hall remains the base activity for
more or less each day. And it is a nice component of our life at USE. Also
because around 6-7 in the evening, the hall starts to get empty: the members of
the staff has left, Dutch students are gone back to their friends and families,
and while only a few professors still pass by, you typically find yourself with
other 10-12 international students –probably always the same- who keep working
together ad laughing more and more as the fatigue is going on. These last hours
at Adam Smith are typically the best, because in the silence of the building
you feel free with your friends, and the fatigue intertwines laughs and jokes
about the passed day. Sometimes, if you have to stay longer because the exams
or some dead-lines are close, you see lights shutting down around you. It means
it’s 10 pm and you’re better to hurry up not to be closed into the building. I
think that all master students have experienced it at least once. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The following day
you probably have another course, and the same is going to happen –only the
group project you work with is maybe different. And if we don’t have courses,
we typically go in groups of 4-5 people to study to the city centre library (a
very big and impressive library indeed, but not always evident to find free
seats), where we can again have lunch and breaks together. Again, we tend to
stay there until around 8, after what we sometimes have a beer or dinner
together, or you can simply stops on the way home to say “hi” or scrounge a
dinner to someone of your friends who live on the way home. The library is
often the destination of both Saturday and Sunday, even if typically nobody
starts before 10, except in the exam periods… when of course everything is more
compressed and the nights as well can become interesting adventures! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">What we also hope
is that with the spring it will be possible to organize some studying groups to
the park. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">But do we always work
that much? How much work is actually required by a master student?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">It depends. The
work load is relevant, but in general allows a high degree of flexibility. For
instance, the greatest part of Dutch students perform paid work besides the
studies, or volunteers in several political groups or student associations. Also if several international students do work
or volunteering, typically who comes from abroad to follow a master program
tends to be more focused on the master program. This is true also because who has
always lived in a place tends to have more commitments and connections: several
Dutch students are part of sportive groups, or play in music bands, or have
other weekly appointments. We, the “internationals”, tend to study more also
because we basically don’t have much else to do: it is dark soon, it is very
cold and often rains, and if I think to the winter months which just passed, I remember
that being all together working and talking in Adam Smith was often much more
attractive, warm and fun than wondering around. Once here, it is simply natural
to remain working together until the very end of the day, and the personal
relationships which build around that are maybe the best aspect of my year so
far. But also several of us perform different activities besides the master: I
know that someone found small jobs, some other signed up to the gym or to other
sporting groups, some are in the board of student associations. I personally
attended a Dutch course organized at an exceptional price by ING (International
Neighbourhood Group) -from which I was not in the end learning much because (my
fault!) I was not doing enough homework; and I was also bringing some work of
translation and research from Italy, that I try to fit whenever I can.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">In conclusion, the
master requires a considerable effort, which if afforded exclusively allows
having on average higher results, but it can also be placed side by side with
other activities, by being fairly tranquil about not failing the exams.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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is more or less the kind of life I am conducting here with my friends and “colleagues”,
as to the studying. On the whole, I would describe it as dynamic and varied,
but especially collective: for one reason or another, we tend to stay more or
less all together, and to share a lot. This is maybe the best part of studying
here, besides the organization and the contents of courses, and it’s true even
without considering the social life and the “night life” in particular, which would
deserve a blog on its own, and maybe a more resilient night-liver than me.</span></div>
Francesco Rossi Salveminihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17956856367273993100noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-63860802893497123822014-12-18T04:41:00.001-08:002014-12-18T04:46:02.474-08:00First period -overview<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">After 48 days, I have maybe recovered enough to reflect about the first period, which
finished on the 2<sup>nd</sup> of November. I think it can be useful to know
how first courses looked like.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The first period was composed by two
courses, Public Economics and Empirical Economics. As my predecessor blogger
Martijn said, these courses are meant as the basis on which the following
courses are going to construct. They were indeed very important courses, and
very different. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Public Economics was deepening in detail
the most important cases of market failures (public goods, externalities,
asymmetric information, etc.), considering the effects of possible policies. We
had two meetings per week: a lecture and a tutorial. They were both held only
for the around 20 students of our master. During the lecture, professor Groot
was explaining the main arguments of the course, connecting them with
contemporaneous debates. Every week we were furnished several articles meant to
problematize and expand the subjects from the book, while the professor was
always pointing out the concrete aspects of the theory, putting the theoretical
arguments in touch with actual problems of the international scene. Especially
interesting was the lecture on inequality, where through the web site of the
“<a href="http://www.globalrichlist.com/">Global rich list</a>” we where shown in which highest percentage of the world
income distribution we were most likely going to be. With a net income of
25.000 euros per year, you would result in the top 1.5 % of world incomes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj423BeQEy9XcPG6sINHO2U_wv9PY46OL4SZCH9F57-rU8NBi7OmBlP_LULDUUO93mliM6Zu2NEJajutjdZXxHBAgOtjPcNTL6Isy9CEhJ5DnLXQQi9QWqzBaTA63ezqmgxSanhV1rqhhQ/s1600/IMG_20140929_123249.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj423BeQEy9XcPG6sINHO2U_wv9PY46OL4SZCH9F57-rU8NBi7OmBlP_LULDUUO93mliM6Zu2NEJajutjdZXxHBAgOtjPcNTL6Isy9CEhJ5DnLXQQi9QWqzBaTA63ezqmgxSanhV1rqhhQ/s1600/IMG_20140929_123249.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A part from the connection with the real
world, I find interesting the theory of Public economics in itself. I was
always impressed by how economic science allows to deal with sociological and
psychological aspects of people’s behaviours in a mathematical and analytical
manner. You deal with graphs and formulas, which apparently look arid, but what
actually shape them are potential desires, fears, opinions, fatigues and
pleasures of people. All the “life lymph” which makes people work, choose
whether to affront risk, save or spend, privilege the rich or the poor, keeps
dancing in front of you in a ballet of lines and axes, while even the most
chaotic aspects of life can show in these limpid formulas where by listening
carefully you can still hear pulsing passions and fears. This is the most fun I
personally find in Public Economics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggLWTYniydMd1t8G33E050GE88zIYYBhyphenhyphenH1vwgFkutJxlNrXbSyPKRl0gKGU8Wj56ItwYPt2M1pdMGEnsu-p2WqVefjp4BE7ef4dplS0W9XUYIurGfph5vkRhXFiurycgUGSVESyly5k4/s1600/IMG_20141020_110219.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggLWTYniydMd1t8G33E050GE88zIYYBhyphenhyphenH1vwgFkutJxlNrXbSyPKRl0gKGU8Wj56ItwYPt2M1pdMGEnsu-p2WqVefjp4BE7ef4dplS0W9XUYIurGfph5vkRhXFiurycgUGSVESyly5k4/s1600/IMG_20141020_110219.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In the tutorial we were instead preparing
the exercises for the exam. Tutorials were prepared by students, and every week
three or four of us were explaining the exercises related to the book chapters.
This made the course quite participated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">On the other hand, Empirical Economics was
essentially a course of Econometrics, which was teaching us a medium level
knowledge of the econometric theory and of regressions techniques. The course
was really important, since it furnishes the main empirical instruments to
actually work with economics; and it is the main “technique”, the most
important “know how” furnished by the master. This is personally the course on
which I was pointing the most in order to find a place in the labour market
afterwards. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Nevertheless, it was indeed a very
difficult course. Again it was structured in two meeting per week (lecture and
tutorial) but for this course students of all masters in economics were
together. So in lectures we were around 100 students, in a big hall (the
auditorium), while for tutorials we were splitting in smaller groups of around
25 students.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> After the first two lectures which were
resuming the basic knowledge of statistics and econometrics (the content of the
summer-course), we started with time series, panel data and instrumental
variables. At the same time, for each tutorial we had to prepare several
exercises, mainly through the use of the software STATA (to learn its use was
one of the most important acquirements from the course).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Relating to the course of Empirical
Economics, I would like two add two things. On one hand, as I said, it was
extremely important. On the other, it was difficult: and it was difficult
because the subject itself is complicated, but also because the course was not
leading us by hand. The pre-required level of knowledge of the subject was
important, and while Dutch students were in general taking the basis course at
the bachelors, most part of international students had troubles. So I would
say: don’t take this as an argument against choosing the master: the course
will in the end make you know econometrics, which is really important. But it
won’t be easy. So prepare to acquire most part of the knowledge by self-study:
the chapters of the book will help you to understand (the book is indeed very
clear and provides several examples), the slides will tell you what’s the
essential material you need to know, and once you have read book and slides you
can follow the lectures which will make you practice with the subject. So
through this triad (book slides lectures) you can expect to pass the exam (and
I had indeed a final good grade). But don’t try to change the order of the
three, i.e. don’t expect to understand the lectures without reading book and
slides, or to understand the slides without reading the book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In the end, to be true, I found very
interesting and fascinating also the course of Empirical Economics. I
personally like this abstract thinking, and enjoy how in your imagination all
these theoretical forces and cross effects combine giving shape to an
intellectual space. If I can give you one hint which cost me several weeks of
study and reflection, just remember this: the problem you will face in
empirical economics, is basically almost always the same: you have to avoid
that the error term is connected at the same time with the dependent variable
and with some explanatory variables, because it will give a biased estimator.
This can take several names: omitted variables, unit root, autocorrelation… but
the phenomenon which causes problem is at the end always this. You maybe now
don’t understand my words, but trust me, young Skywalker, they may turn to be
useful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Up to now, I would say that I am really
satisfied with the master. It is interesting,
rich in insights, and in general we are followed quite well and almost with
a one-to-one attention. Only for one course over four it wasn’t so (Empirical
Economics -about the two courses of present period I will write later). Professors know us very well and it’s
perfectly normal to call us by name, in a familiar atmosphere work built on
daily basis in a group of less than 20 students. This is totally different from
what I was experiencing in Italy. At the same time, the work required is
affordable but important, which in the end will make the master useful. And I
would like to remind that I am not writing in the interest of USE, I simply
express my true impressions as a master student.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">With this, I wish you all a nice holiday
and Christmas and friends! No matter if you may read in June or August -you
always have a Christmas in front of you…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Francesco Rossi Salveminihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17956856367273993100noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-28058824228092217682014-10-30T10:50:00.003-07:002014-10-30T11:25:27.399-07:00Mission Impossible: Room in Utrecht <div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Next week is the week of the exams, and I would like to write my last
blog before diving in the study. Since
last time I was writing about a subject relating to our studying here, today I
would like to discuss about a feature of our life in Utrecht. Something basic:
the HOUSING.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgazuBB-qtMfWleSS5SnAIACScDTBo8ewQAaqDSX7ezB2d_q3HAn_iAH3Ii9iVlugxuAZI5p08Ro8yDJs2CobX6-oYxWhXlnyyOqwRXxfkfxJmOiSdyLbow3KxP1xwG0UT9628QXH8fBzg/s1600/Tom.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgazuBB-qtMfWleSS5SnAIACScDTBo8ewQAaqDSX7ezB2d_q3HAn_iAH3Ii9iVlugxuAZI5p08Ro8yDJs2CobX6-oYxWhXlnyyOqwRXxfkfxJmOiSdyLbow3KxP1xwG0UT9628QXH8fBzg/s1600/Tom.png" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Maybe while
you are planning to study for your master in Utrecht you imagine yourself
sleeping somewhere, and you think of your future room as to one of the details
that you’ll set up while organizing your trip in the few weeks before your
departure or even once you are arrived. You should not. Finding a room in
Utrecht is not a normal housing procedure: it’s a savage hunting in which only
the most determined and resilient finally succeed. I will try to illustrate the
question according to my personal experience and the ones of my friends in a
few (I hope) useful points.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">1) The
price.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Utrecht is
a city of 330.000 inhabitants with more than 60.000 students, and you need not
to be an economist in order to understand that prices are going to float high.
The lowest prices I’ve had news from real people, talking to me not being
ghosts nor fairy dreams, are around 300 euros per month, and they are really
few exceptions. The utmost limit is more hardly identifiable, but I know
numerous students that pay around 600 per month and even more. I personally pay
430, and I would say that I am not far from the mean. So, to be true, these are
probably the prices that you should expect. I know that Dutch students often
pay less, but they have the advantage of living on place, and they can
subscribe to some mysterious students’ associations with an year of advance,
paying very low rents and living with only other Dutch students. But even if
you have the chance to be in these waiting lists and to live in such
apartments, if you are an international student I would not suggest you to do
so (see point 10).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">2) When to
start looking for a room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It is a
hard question: if you start looking in March probably the room are not
available yet, in July and August everybody is on holiday and they won’t answer
to your e-mails, while in September it is too late and games are done. I would
suggest to start looking as soon as possible, but not because any period is
better than others: simply because by looking for a longer period you maximize
your chances, and luck is indeed the most important element in your quest. I
personally started looking for a room in May, and was not able to find one
before the end of August. I would suggest in any case to arrive in Utrecht at
least one week before the start of your courses, if you still have not a room
(I kept looking for a room during the summer-school). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">3) Short
Stay Housing: SSH<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The Short
Stay is at first sight the easiest chance to get a room, since Utrecht
University recommends it to you. Moving on time, it is actually easy to find a
room with SSH, if you are ready to pay those prices. And while you pay 600
euros for your apartment, you should also remember that the Dutch student
besides you, who booked one year in advance, is paying 200 euros less every
month for the same house, because he/she received his/her apartment
“unfurnished”. But of course, you literally live on campus, so if you can pay
for it that can worth the price.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">4)
Kamernet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The first
option that internet suggests you in order to look for rooms is Kamernet.
Whether Kamernet is a valuable instrument to look for rooms, it is hard to say.
Personally, I had an account for two weeks, and I was sending around 30 e-mails
without receiving one answer. But I heard from some people that they were
sending 180 e-mails and received around 15 answers, so it must be a matter of
proportions. But you should not rely too much on this website: you see a lot of
attractive announcements but the problem is that people don’t remove their
announcements even if they found someone, so the site is full of ghost
announcements that continuously renovate themselves. Furthermore, the quest is
so savage that landlords (I was talking with some of them) receive hundreds of
messages and they only reply to people they like (see point 9). No matter if
you decide whether to open or not an account on Kamernet, the only thing I want
you to be aware is that after two weeks the account will renovate
automatically, and you will be charged the fee without being asked: to avoid it
you have to de-select the option somewhere in the settings of your account (I
was advised like I’m now advising you).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">5) So,
where should I look?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I would say
that the best resources are the free open groups: on facebook you can find a
lot of them. In the summer 2014 I subscribed to the following groups: “I know a
place…Utrecht”, “Find a room(mate) or house in Utrecht”, “Rooms/kamer/zimm in
Utrecht”, “Housing Utrecht”, “Utrecht free adds”, “Utrecht international
students”. Maybe when you will look for a room they won’t exist anymore, but
for sure some others will be there. Just type “room” and “Utrecht” on facebook
and you will find something. The self-organisation of students is always the
best resource –and it was on one of these groups that I found a room for the
period of the Summer-school. The problem of these groups is that you find a lot
of announcements of people looking for rooms, and a few rooms offered
–assaulted by crowds of comments and likes. But you should not be discouraged,
and by following point 9 you can maximize your chances. There is also a very
useful free group on google (uuing@googlegroups.com) and it is actually there
that I found the room where I am in this very moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmA4O2TlQPbtO1rmflMxVr4ks0mX3DGhx_jjsdZzfSxlwlmGsa1Ag-3fsS4qtWxkNZ5sFnTZp51hU69qERgSInlb8oVRgnO6vZXszJlDIM8xd5e1ELV0q51HlNUifxQmsXMS0__G7Pto/s1600/Map+Utrecht2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmA4O2TlQPbtO1rmflMxVr4ks0mX3DGhx_jjsdZzfSxlwlmGsa1Ag-3fsS4qtWxkNZ5sFnTZp51hU69qERgSInlb8oVRgnO6vZXszJlDIM8xd5e1ELV0q51HlNUifxQmsXMS0__G7Pto/s1600/Map+Utrecht2.png" height="201" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">6) How far
should I look?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">If you
watch on googlemaps distances look quite bigger than they are, also because you
have to assume that you will move by bike (and on the other hand times that
googlemaps gives for bikes are quite trustable). I live in Tuindorp - Oost, in
a street that looks quite far from the center and from the campus by the map,
but indeed it takes me from 8 to 12 minutes to get to both, depending on my
delay. You should imagine yourself biking in the morning under the rain to get
to classes: I would say that 12 minutes is still an acceptable time –less would
be better, I would maybe not recommend much more. If you live in Lombok, for
instance, it can take from 15 to 20 minutes to get to the campus; but on the
other hand you live closer to the center. It is a matter of choice. All I
suggest is: don’t get scared by the map of the city when you look for a room
–only check the distances in biking time on google.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">7) To Zeist
or not to Zeist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">If you
choose to live in Zeist (a small city not far from Utrecht and not very very
far from the Uithof) you can maybe find prices slightly lower than in Utrecht.
Still, I strongly suggest you not to live there. It will take you at least 30 minutes by
bike every morning to get to the campus, and 30 going back (the center is further). And most of the
time it will be raining. You can take a bus, but busses are expensive –so your
small advantage of price fades away. Furthermore you would maybe like to go out
in the evening once in a while: you will have to bike in the dark, or to keep a
constant look at the last bus in order to go back. And all your friends will
propose you every times to sleep to their places, but you will never accept
because the following morning you have to study. This is what happens with my
friends who live in Zeist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">8) The
market of personalities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">In Utrecht,
competition for rooms is so high that landlords (or more often actual tenants)
can afford themselves the luxury to select prospective tenants according to
their personalities and their characters. So if you ask for a room, you will
probably be invited for an individual meeting or for a “borrel” (a collective
social meeting) where the actual tenants of the house choose from the aspiring
flat-mates the ones they prefer to live with. This is something not even
possible to imagine in other cities, for instance Rome, where there is a more
balanced equilibrium between demand and supply and landlords are already happy
enough if they can find a tenant that takes their rooms at the market price.
But in Utrecht the situation is different, so you should prepare your smile and
your better jokes and try to be the lucky one among the other room-hunters. But
this is also an occasion to check if you actually like the room, and it is
indeed always better to verify in person the apartment before paying the
deposit and signing the contract. I was going to take a room in Lombok which
seemed very nice from pictures, but once I saw the place I really could not fall
in love with the house, even with all my experience of tent-sleeping and
back-pack voyaging. On the other hand, when I was invited to meet my actual
flatmates in an individual meeting, I really liked the house (which had the
same price) and I really liked them (so these meeting are a good occasion for
you as well to choose your future friends). They were meeting 13 students to
find a flatmate, and apparently this was the first exam that I passed in
Utrecht (and I hope not the last one). But I confess that I played dirty: by
pushing on the Italian stereotype I claimed that I know how to make pizza and
so defeated all the other competitors. And my claim is actually true, but I
have had no occasion to demonstrate it so far. When it will happen, I’ll let
you know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">9)
Introduce yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The problem
is that if you are looking for rooms when you are in your home country you
cannot even participate in such interviews or “borrels”. So what you should at
least do is to write a very detailed and convincing presentation of yourself,
to add in the mails you send on your posts on facebook, together with some nice
pictures of yourself. This is always because of the fierce competition around
the few available rooms, so you have to convince your future landlords or flat-mates.
You don’t need to do anything more than being honest: describe yourself, your
philosophy and interests, what you would like from a room or from your flat-mates.
It is really worth spending some time on it, I was sending tonnes of standard
and neutral e-mails asking for rooms (used as I was to roman standards), and I
only started to receive answers when I added pictures and detailed “nice”
presentations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">10) The
company.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">You will
probably experience a long and severe winter during your master in Utrecht, so
your flat-mates are presumably the people you are going to meet the most,
together with your master fellows –you will probably spend time with them all
the evenings that you don’t feel like struggling with the wind and the rain in
order to meet someone else. So I would say that they are one of the main
variables in your quest. I actually chose my present room mainly for my flat-mates
(I send them a hug if they are reading! –Chay should still clean the kitchen)
and I’m really happy on that side. We are three, around the same age, one
English guy, one Dutch, and a spaghetti-eater (me). One thing I would suggest:
Dutch students are generally really foreign friendly, but still I would not
live in a flat where you are the only foreigner with other 9 Dutch students,
especially if they are particularly young. I experienced that during the
summer-course, and it was not easy at all to integrate. Furthermore, I had
stories from two different people who were asked to leave the dining rooms
because some exclusive parties were held at which they were not invited (Dutch
students can have mysterious fraternities that tend to have these kinds of
approaches –something incomprehensible to my mentality).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I hope that
these points will be somehow useful to you and I now definitely need to go
studying!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Francesco Rossi Salveminihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17956856367273993100noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-41710487165912487482014-10-10T04:59:00.000-07:002014-10-30T10:55:11.042-07:00Group Project<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">We are in the middle of the first period
(two courses for each period, every period of around two months, for the
<a href="http://www.uu.nl/masters/en/economics-public-policy-and-management">Master in Economics of Public Policy and management</a> and the tracks of <a href="http://www.uu.nl/masters/en/international-economics-and-business">International Economics and Business</a>)
and I would like to describe some of our work as master students. In
particular, let's give a snapshot on our group project. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">This is a project correlated -at least for
EPPM students- with both courses of period 1 (Empirical Economics and Public
Economics) and will end up in a paper to be evaluated, under different
perspectives, in each of the two courses. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The interest of the project paper relies to
the fact that it's a first occasion to experiment directly what it means to
conduct a research in the field of Economics. On this regard, we were left as
students with a high level of autonomy: once assigned the groups, any of them
received only a general indication about its topic; the regard on which this
was to be investigated and the direction we were to give to our research, was
up to us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCAXkco7_aA1MvtSdAfCgFZEQZIbFqT0MP_Mi9Q0iLMC1w8pSkFWyeTKxM3ZKyOaxnSlRredeR8OWfZ5TuSePDiUHuDFkvTBKoFSLlQ-ZoksHr8lfgH4BjM0Bv1RxdRtHowMnwb7_sJAc/s1600/IMG_20141014_150415.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCAXkco7_aA1MvtSdAfCgFZEQZIbFqT0MP_Mi9Q0iLMC1w8pSkFWyeTKxM3ZKyOaxnSlRredeR8OWfZ5TuSePDiUHuDFkvTBKoFSLlQ-ZoksHr8lfgH4BjM0Bv1RxdRtHowMnwb7_sJAc/s1600/IMG_20141014_150415.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In particular, my group (and I would like
to mention the other three glorious components: Charlotte, Agniezska and
Thomas), was assigned to update the work conducted by Goodin in 1999 and
published in the book “The real worlds of welfare capitalism”. There Goodin was
comparing, under numerous regards, the welfare states's performances of US,
Netherlands and Germany from 1984 till 1994. Our initial task was to calculate
the same indexes for the German welfare state during the following 15 years, to
find out how the performances of its welfare system had been changing over
time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">This would have been indeed an original and
interesting result in itself. Problem was that, unfortunately, the aim of the
research appeared to be too vast, while the data sets for the work (whose
finding is in itself a considerable part of the research) revealed to be huge
and not easy to find. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">As a group, we then decided to focus on a
particular aspect of the comparison conducted by Goodin: the category of <i>autonomy</i>,
which relies on the extent welfare states are able to allow their citizens a
freedom of choice in allocating time between work and leisure. It
appeared that Goodin himself, in further works, was developing this category in
the notion of <i>post-productivism</i>, an ideal conception of the welfare state on which our professor of
Public Economics, Groot Loek, has been working for a considerable time. Thanks
to Loek we discovered that post-productivism is it-self related to the notion of
<i>decommodification</i>, developed by Andersen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">By studying the scientific literature
related to the two concepts (and the library of <a href="http://www.uu.nl/university/Library/EN/Pages/default.aspx">Utrecht University Library</a>
gives you access to a huge amount of online papers) we found out that it was
all somehow relying over a non-seen, implicit, fundamental basic assumption.
There we found our research question, and the sense of our work: we are going
to verify this assumption, thanks to the empirical datas on OECD welfare
states. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtThDoeDjwhLAM3WtG7C7a-uwwHU_gPrvH2jOsK8LSXL3ivwuY0clKYbpQVg6wT9DBj76r-jgYhFafzwqc_qOuWdf5s9OrEJpxe6uQCnUKHkS8MQUseD2FsQ0n2Cv4MakWhLAN4Eq9gTo/s1600/2+-rIMage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtThDoeDjwhLAM3WtG7C7a-uwwHU_gPrvH2jOsK8LSXL3ivwuY0clKYbpQVg6wT9DBj76r-jgYhFafzwqc_qOuWdf5s9OrEJpxe6uQCnUKHkS8MQUseD2FsQ0n2Cv4MakWhLAN4Eq9gTo/s1600/2+-rIMage.jpg" height="220" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">So, once done the theoretical definition of
the research, we started with the empirical part: find out the datas, think of
the variables we would need, look for as many as possible control variables
traditionally associated with our questions... And then? We are still on that.
But next step will be to actually run the regression, deal with eventual
problems and finally discuss the results.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Anyway, the point in all this description
is that from a given starting point, we had to look, think, analyze and reflect
by ourselves. We were only given a general track, and deepening it we arrived
somewhere else, and from there somewhere else, until we found a specific
restrained field in which our work could have a little meaning in itself. And
apparently, scientific research is told most of the time to be something like
that. For us as students this is extremely useful, both to learn how to apply
what we were learning during courses (and -especially for econometrics- it is
indeed not easy to apply something already hard to understand), and to find out
wether the work of research (in some of its various levels) should be fitting
for us. To me, it looks really interesting, but I still don't know wether we
will finally produce a good paper or not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">By the way we are not alone: our professor
of Public Economics and our tutor of Empirical Economics are guiding and
helping us, mainly giving returns and suggestions about the work or the
hypothesis we are presenting them. We had our feedback meeting yesterday, and
apparently, with some corrections, we can go on... so let's see if regressing
the regressable will bring us something not to regret. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Francesco Rossi Salveminihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17956856367273993100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-72477813748436738592014-09-22T08:34:00.002-07:002014-10-10T05:09:10.320-07:00Explosion Utrecht<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Hello everybody!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">Apparently I have the chance to write here,
which is really nice. Should I first introduce myself? Let's say that I am one
of the master students of the UU School of Economics, and that I'm coming from
abroad, let's say from the south... for instance Italy -and that would be
enough about me for the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">The first thing I would like to write
about, before the courses, before the projects, before the general life at the
UU, it's the literal EXPLOSION that was starting the academic year in Utrecht.
I think it's something that prospective students may be interested about, and
on which my fellow students can probably agree with me... let's tell it from my
point of view. You maybe arrive in Utrecht in August to follow the Summercourse
of Econometrics (if you, like me, are coming from a field different from
Economics): then you find a nice city, not very crowded, and somehow a little
asleep. You have difficult lectures in the morning, difficult tutorials in the
afternoon, and some relaxed rhythms to start to know your course-mates which
are also some of your future master-mates; you also can enjoy this quite city
to arrange some practical matters, for instance finding a room (which would
need an entire book, not a blog!!) or -most important!- buying a bicycle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">Then, something happens: September comes.
And with it, arrives something which has a very menacing name: the
“Introduction week”. You will discover that your life is going to change,
especially if you are a foreign student. Seriously. And I'm not a first year
experience student -let's say that I already have a master, already was
studying abroad, and not to say that I'm “a lot” years old let's say that I
have a loooong experience as a student. Still, I was struck! </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">You start with the
“International Meet&Greet” on Monday, organized to welcome the
international students from all the UU bachelor and master programs, and you
should imagine a scene like that: the hall of a university building with
something like 200 students coming from all over the world all stuck together
between the entrance and some tables with tea and coffee. And you can hardly
move between the tall short (finally not tall!) blond brown (finally not
blond!) crowd of young people, chatting with the most various accents, and you
are probably stressed to take as many contacts and phone numbers as you can
because you fear that you won't see those people again. But the following day
you are already all together at the Introduction day, into the really wonderful
Education Building: there you'll receive a lot of gadgets by your new
university, and finally attend an interesting lecture about Dutch culture. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">Then, on Wednesday, you have the introduction for the master students of the
School of Economics, at the Auditorium of the International Campus; and now the
crowd which surrounds you is a little more quiet, because finally your are in
touch with them: the Dutch students! In the afternoon you will probably talk
better with some of them because you'll remain just with your master fellows. From that point I would
say that your year is starting, and that an academic routine of lectures and
tutorials is taking place (if you except the AMAZING Introduction day organized
by ESN on Saturday, again with all the international students, and for those
who took part in it the ESN Introduction week). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoOv4Efu1oM1JMqaTRB-o_Wp-wB8Hm3Oo7NmwphC9jNgMb9-PQLboWfnM5f9NNKZbUTdCQS8Q5VluLzsxVeop0R4yi5pN1dPV2lLye_JpCI9OPi1fLeZnVLo2-K-oA9m7qTseL1I0GTU8/s1600/scelta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoOv4Efu1oM1JMqaTRB-o_Wp-wB8Hm3Oo7NmwphC9jNgMb9-PQLboWfnM5f9NNKZbUTdCQS8Q5VluLzsxVeop0R4yi5pN1dPV2lLye_JpCI9OPi1fLeZnVLo2-K-oA9m7qTseL1I0GTU8/s1600/scelta.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">But when I'm talking about explosion I not
only refer to the introduction week in itself... all the city is changed: now
it is really FULL of students (maybe the average age of the city is 35?), and
they are -we are- everywhere. And there are maybe ten or more facebook groups
where people are continuously organizing activities of any kind where
participants only want to know each other. And how not mention the students
organizations: so the tuesday evening at the Club Poema organized by <a href="http://esn-utrecht.nl/">ESN</a>, the wednesday evening at the “Social get
together” by the <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/ingutrecht/">ING</a>
board, just to prepare for the weekend... and the Dutch course organized by ING as
well! In short, one would think that it's possible to spend the whole year just
in these interesting social activities, where people are there only to make new
friends and have a nice time. But apparently, we are here mainly to study, so I
now definitively need to say you bye! (I hope only for the moment).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Francesco Rossi Salveminihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17956856367273993100noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-43631649771710706392014-02-06T07:41:00.000-08:002014-02-06T07:42:22.202-08:00Januari is over<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
January is a
depressing month. The month that shows you that all your New Year's
resolutions are intentions rather than actual plans. It is also the
month of exams for Block 2. Although I planned to start working on
papers and exams early, I found myself finishing them at 6 AM. Both
<i><a href="http://www.uu.nl/university/masters/NL/ecosocial/Pages/default.aspx">EPPM</a></i>-courses in Block 2 were graded by the combination of an exam and
a paper. My background in political science has taught me a lot about
writing papers, so these were more satisfying for me. My exams went
alright, but they only test the general knowledge I got out of the
book, while I prefer to research a specific topic in-depth. That was
possible in the papers. We were lucky that the word limits turned out
to be more suggestions than actual limits, since political scientists
tend to use a lot of words to explain their arguments.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The second block
builds on the first. After we learned the basics in block one, both
on Public Economcics as on Statistics, the courses in Block 2 (<a href="https://www.osiris.universiteitutrecht.nl/osistu_ospr/OnderwijsCatalogusSelect.do?selectie=cursus&cursus=ECMPRM&collegejaar=2013">Public Risk Management</a> and <a href="https://www.osiris.universiteitutrecht.nl/osistu_ospr/OnderwijsCatalogusSelect.do?selectie=cursus&cursus=ECMPCIW&collegejaar=2013">Policy Competition in an International World</a>) use
these basics to discuss current issues on social security. How do
pension or health care systems work? Does migration lead to a race to
the bottom in social security spending? The debates we discussed are
very relevant today and the topics of our papers were actually in the
news last month.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
At
first we wrote a paper on possibilities to include the self-employed
in the social security system, especially via the Dutch
<i>Broodfonds</i>-iniative.
The highest official of the ministry of Economic Affairs <a href="http://www.economie.nl/artikel/sturen-op-de-toekomst">raised the same issue</a> in that week. The other paper proposed plans to include
EU-migrants into social security systems and this time the WRR –
<i>the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy </i>–<a href="http://www.wrr.nl/en/actueel/news-item/article/roemeense-en-bulgaarse-arbeidsmigratie-in-betere-banen/"> proposed the same plans</a> only 10 hours after we handed in our paper.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In the past two decades we have seen that we cannot longer just let
the economy rule our society, we have to make political decisions on
where we want our economy and our social security to go. At<i> EPPM </i>we
cover the same issues that are covered in the news or amongst
politicians right now. One point of critique though; seeing these
debates are fought right now, it was slightly disappointing that both
courses used textbooks that were already more than 10 years old. But
a wide variety of recent articles did partly make up for that. I
passed both courses, so we're done with that now. Next week I'll tell
something about my new course: Energy and Environmental Policies.
February has started at last.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18071873169687644615noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-44667346436143201232014-02-05T06:18:00.000-08:002014-02-05T06:18:02.390-08:00Back to realityHi everyone!<br />
<br />
As you can very well see (or read) I made it it safe and sound back from the snowy mountains of France. (even though I missed my flight at first place!) Although this little ski trip may not be study related, I am writing about it to let you know that after the exams you have each period, (4 times a year) you have 2 weeks of freedom :D (given that you did not fail any of your previous exams...) So its quite a good incentive to study! Just so you know, in Financial accouting I got an 8.0 which is a really nice grade especially comapared to the 5.0 I scored in Microeconomics...which means that next time there is no holiday for me :-( <br />Anyway the two new courses I have are Statistics and since I did not choose a minor, Marketing. They both are really interesting but seem really hard too! Meanwhile I found a part-time job in a really nice Kafé so you can imagine how happy I am about it as a student.<br />If that wouldn't be enough, one of my friends from hungary is visiting me the coming week and another one promised to do the same in the following months. <br /><br />Now I must turn my attention back to my studies, but you will hear from me soon again.<br />
<br />
Have fun,<br />
BenceBence Jenőfihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07779498481197542493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-55236333505573618462014-01-13T06:43:00.000-08:002014-01-13T06:45:35.386-08:00New blogger: Economics of Public Policy and ManagementWhile writing this first blog as a student at USE, I am also working on a paper and presentation that need to be finished soon. Whether I am just avoiding doing these things right now or that studying inspired me to write this blog, I am not sure. But with two presentations in the coming week and two exams in the week after that, I don't think there is a calm moment to write these blogs anyway. Soon, I will expand more on the characteristics of the master, the exciting moments or the long nights of studying, but for now I will try to answer one simple question: why did I choose for the master Economics of Public Policy and Management.<br />
<br />
Let me first tell you where I come from. My name is Martijn Otten, 20 years old, born and raised in Leiden, about 50 km west of Utrecht. I finished a bachelor at Leiden University College last summer. I am interested in all different aspects of how we have organised our societies, such as the political, social and economical level. Therefore, in choosing what to study, I considered about everything they offer in the social sciences departments. Leiden University College gave me an opportunity to combine these interests and my study included international relations, political philosophy, journalism and, of course, economics. Next to my academic interest, I am also interested in its practical side and I want to be involved in these political processes; I am active in the young social democratic movement in the Netherlands and I am a candidate council member for Labour Party in Leiden.<br />
<br />
After finishing my bachelor, I felt that it was essential to gain more economic knowledge which would be of practical use to my political interest. Economics is all around us and I believe that USE understands that it is, in essence, a social study. Many scholars attempt to transform economics into some semi-mathematical science, but that misses the point of economics. Even the simplest debates about employment, investment or welfare can never be answered fully with the simple utilitarian 'what is most effective?' We always need to look at equity, social consequences or non-economical norms. At the moment, I am reading an inspiring book by Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, called 'What money can't buy'. At USE we are able to both learn all essentials about economic research, while at the same time we are able to discuss that in the broader frame of social sciences.<br />
<br />
I'll come back to you soon, but I'm now returning to my papers on alternative risk sharing devices amongst the self-employed (certain types of co-operative enterprises) and on migration within the European Union and it's effect on policy makers in Western European countries. Both issues are in the news on a daily basis. Romanian and Bulgarian workers that may enter all other European countries. The highest Dutch government official at the ministry of Economics arguing that the self-employed should have more social security. If you are interested to discuss both the economical theory and arguments behind these developments, whilst also engaging in political debates about the legitimacy and equity of the policy outcomes, you're at the right place here.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18071873169687644615noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-91561477867870972762014-01-03T14:08:00.002-08:002014-01-03T14:09:42.925-08:00Holidays!As I promised, I am giving a sign of life here (my endterms went reasonably fine). Also, these are the first days of the new year! After 4 months of living here in Utrecht I visited my friends and family for the first time and spent my holidays at home. So you can imagine how excited I was about meeting them all again. Until now, I also lacked the experience of flying alone which I think is special moment in everyone's life (especially this age). However the New Year's Eve was extraordinary with my friends, I am back again in Utrecht and even though its officially winter time now, the Dutch weather is really kind to me lately. Something extraordinary to point out, is that I was given the chance to participate in Antony Burgmans' guest lecture a while ago and it was really interesting. All credit goes to the DLC (Discussion and Lecture) committe for that. Meanwhile the regular financial accounting lectures are also spiced up with interesting topics and interesting lecturers from the various fields of the industry. New exams are coming up in microeconomics and financial accounting, but after that, ski trip with friends to France will make me forget every stressed moment.<br />
That's all folks for now ;-) will see what will happen in the following weeks!Bence Jenőfihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07779498481197542493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-342883121742514662013-12-29T01:34:00.002-08:002013-12-29T01:34:46.374-08:00This Is the End
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">:-) </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> (next to your study) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, which stimulate your creativity, you are able to concentrate and to
perform better. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Good luck! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Jana</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-17536336565429985762013-12-21T04:18:00.003-08:002013-12-21T04:18:46.627-08:00A Masters choice: Thesis Topic
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will write about non-monetary incentives and
their effect on corporate social responsibility. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-20733202885946830472013-12-04T01:42:00.002-08:002013-12-04T01:42:35.339-08:00Career Day
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> 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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">J</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-87122290791546616832013-11-17T15:02:00.005-08:002013-11-17T15:02:35.373-08:00A new stage of my life...Hi All!<br />
<br />
Not only am I new to University but also to blogging, since this is my first blog post ever. I am Bence Jenőfi, a 19 years old freshman at Utrecht School of Economics, studying Economics and Business Economics (how suprising :D) I am hungarian and I came here to study for 3 major reasons. I wanted to study in English, I wanted to study at a highly ranked University with a multidisciplinary approach, and last but not least I found Utrecht as a place awesome. I am living here since August and the last 3 month just made me more certain, that I did not regret my choice. The freshman week was unforgettable...<i>(indeed I remember evrything :P )</i><br />
<br />
<i></i>As the weeks passed by, I got familiar with various economic concepts from different social scientist and also developed my optimizing skills in math. However, the midterm exams went reasonable well, I am still waiting for those crucial endterm results from 2 weeks ago. Cross your fingers guys...there is something at stake! Meanwhile I started my second period of studying this week with two brand new courses<i> (Microeconomics and Financial Accounting)</i>.<br />
<br />
One thing you should keep in mind is, that friendships come just as fast as bikes go by! (I meant here: bikes from your inventory) I also cant help but mention the two major types of Utrecht Universitiy social life: There are the ones who study hard and those who party harder!<br />
<br />
I am really happy to mention that I am an active member of the<i> ECU '92</i> study association both in the <i>Relaxcie</i> (party organising) and the <i>Investment</i> committe. There is an interesting project going on in both of them so I am not bored at all. Also, one of my great friends visited me this weekend who has never been in Utrecht before, so it was a fun time to guide her through the best places.<br />
<br />
I dont know the policy about making advertisements :D but guys, if you want a really nice experience besides drinking only, look up <i>De Belgie</i> and <i>Olvivier</i>. These two places are unique in their own atmosphere.<br />
<br />
And now...I have to go back to my studies. Hopefully you will hear from me again after I got my endterm results...Bence Jenőfihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07779498481197542493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-28500216734505477382013-11-04T09:59:00.000-08:002013-11-04T09:59:11.608-08:00Exams!
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Do you know
this accelerating feeling of just having finished an exam, you feel like the
weight is taken off your shoulders, the sky seems a bit bluer and you feel like the world
is your oyster? <br />(Please sense the overdramatic touch here).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Well then
the feeling that follows should also be familiar: „Dang, this was just one out
of three exams for this week and I actually have to continue studying- like right
now!” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">If you can connect
to this situation, then you have an idea how my day was. I told you that I
would report about my studying efforts for exams, but surprise! I was too busy
studying instead of writing this blog. This was my first exam (International
Business Ventures) of the master and it was comparable to a Bachelor exam at USE.
Well we actually had only two hours time, while normally almost all exams are
three hours. But the amount of content and questions was of course designed for
two hours, so overall it was not a problem to finish writing within this time constraint.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Now I have
to start studying for a theory exam on Wednesday of Empirical Economics and
after that there is one more on Friday (The STATA (statistical computer program)
exam). After I am done with the study marathon, I hope to get back to you
during the weekend after I caught up on enough sleep. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-4071780832459426152013-10-27T14:14:00.002-07:002013-10-27T14:14:42.775-07:00Graduation Ceremony
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">During the
last three weeks the Bachelor and Master graduation ceremonies took place. They
were held at the beautiful academie gebouw (academic building) in the heart of
Utrecht, right next to the Dom. There were small-scale ceremonies each night
and I was happy to hear that I had mine on one evening together with some of my
closest friends. </span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Already a
couple of weeks before the actual event we had to hand in our CV, a short
description of our thesis and some personal information on which the individual
speeches would be based. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">On the day
itself I was quite excited about the evening, since my parents and my grandma
would come from Germany and my grandma has never been in Utrecht so far. Also
two of my best friends from my Bachelor studies, who continued their Masters in
different countries, came back. Therefore I am glad that USE is one of the
fewer faculties that actually still offer traditional evening ceremonies at one
of the most beautiful locations that the University has to offer. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">On the
evening we first got our cap and gowns and had to line up, while our guests
already took place in the hall. It is a great feeling to enter the ‘Senaatzaal’
(senate hall) surrounded by your fellow students, who you got to know well over
the last three years and your family and close friends awaiting you. Shocked by
all the flashlights (yes, even video cameras) it was almost a celebrity-like
moment, even though the big, black gown made you more feel like a Hogwarts
student. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">All the
graduates took place in the first row and when your name was called, you
stepped in front to receive a more or less personal speech followed by the
signing of your Bachelor diploma. The whole ceremony took around one hour and
afterwards more celebrity shots were taken, while there was a reception with
drinks and little cheese (what else?) snacks. Some people took a bit too much
advantage of the open bar and you would expect that especially students, who
can be excused due to lacking financial means to be overly excited about
anything offered for free, were the first ones in line for the drinks. However
often they were beaten to the punch by a thirsty grandma or professor. <br />
The reception was also the moment when everybody met each other’s parents,
which was entertaining; since resemblance was often so striking that there was
little doubt to whom everybody belonged. Some guessing games were already
played during the ceremony before you were officially introduced, next to
finding the only three ladies on the paintings in the Senaatzaal (which was
quite a challenging task, since they were all wearing long-haired wigs). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In case you
are concerned about your outfit, I can only say: Choose your shoes wisely,
since that is more or less the only thing which is still visible underneath the
gown you are wearing for the ceremony. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Now I am
going to dive back into my study books and I will soon report about my current
exam preparations: Exams are coming up! </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-13141765350541687132013-10-05T01:46:00.004-07:002013-10-05T01:46:50.655-07:00Utrecht University: Good choice!
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Welcome and hello to all of you out there! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In the
upcoming months I am going to share my personal Utrecht Experience with anybody
who is interested and willing to give up some precious minutes reading my blog.
I hope to compensate your time by offering you insights into the exciting live
of an international student at Utrecht University. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My name is
Jana, I am 24 years old! (!yes I do feel old around here, but later more on
that)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from Cologne, Germany. I am
following the Master at the Utrecht School of Economics (USE) in „International
Economics and Business“ and I decided to specialize in „International
Management“. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Before I
started the one year Master Program, I already completed a three year
Bachelor study in “Economics and Business Economies” also at USE. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The questions I hear the most when I tell people
that I am from Germany are: Why did you come here? How come that you decided to
study in Utrecht? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Well, let
me explain once more: After an High School Year in America, I realized that I
want to follow a study completely taught in English. However, there are not
many English Bachelor studies to be found in Germany and having been staying
abroad once before, going again seemed appealing. Having been so far from home
for already one year, this time I wanted to keep it close. Well, it ain’t
getting much closer than going to your neighbor country. I like to have the
option to be home fast and relatively cheap, while still being in a foreign
country and “doing my own thing”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course the academic aspect was not unimportant either: Dutch universities
always score top positions at international rankings. After considering
Maastricht University (with around 60% Germans, I felt that there are more
German ‘Bier’ drinking habits and ‘Schlager’ songs than a small city and its
citizens can handle), Utrecht University proofed to be the right choice. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Tot snel! Bis bald! Talk to you soon! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Jana </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-11244097274299193012013-08-15T03:07:00.002-07:002013-08-15T03:07:12.529-07:00For this is the end...<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It’s been
quite a while since my last blog and many things happened in the mean time. I
finished my thesis and therefore officially graduated from the Utrecht School
of Economics for my masters International Economics & Business, track
Globalisation and Development. Before I will shortly summarize the main
findings of my thesis, I will discuss the last few weeks of the writing
process. In contrast to the early weeks, the contact with my supervisor was
very limited because he wanted me to deal with the process and its problems on
my own to be able to critically evaluate my research skills. I felt quite
comfortable with this situation as we already discussed the main issues in
detail before. In the meantime, I was still enrolled in the application
procedure for an traineeship at the Dutch government, for which I was selected
in the last round, the interview. This effectively meant I had to buy my first
ever suit, which didn’t go as smoothly as I would have hoped. With my limited
student budget I had to shop around for a good bargain. I found some pretty
cheap suits in the renowned department stores, but none in accordance with my
taste. At last, I found a tailor shop where I bought a very decent suit for a good
price. They even adjusted the suit slightly for it to fit perfectly to my
build. After watching a YouTube-tutorial to tie my tie I was ready for the
interview. Although they considered me an adequate candidate, the stiff
competition for the available trainee positions unfortunately meant I did not
pass the final round for the Infrastructure & Environment department. One
week after my rejection I received another invitation for an interview at the
department of Foreign Affairs. Again, the interview went smoothly but they
picked another candidate. As mentioned before, I was still writing on my thesis
in the mean time. I will now shortly discuss the main findings. In my thesis I
examined the relation between foreign ownership structures and productivity for
a selection of 31 countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Central America.
As I had some difficulties finding proper firm level productivity data I used
the number of skilled workers, or the skill intensity, as a proxy. I found that
firms with a higher share of foreign ownership hire relatively more skilled
workers compared to firms with lower shares of foreign ownership. This is in
line with expectations from the literature and indicates that foreign owned firms
are relatively more productive than domestic owned firms. The second part of
the thesis focused on two subgroups of foreign owned firms, joint ventures
(partially owned) and wholly owned subsidiaries. It examined the differences
between the two groups in three respects. First, contrary to the expectations,
the thesis finds no difference in terms of the number of skilled workers, or
productivity. Second, wholly owned subsidiaries export relatively more than
joint ventures, which could be the result of the vertically integrated firms in
the data. Last, the key result of the thesis, joint ventures are more
innovative than wholly owned subsidiaries. As I officially graduate the end of
the month, this effectively will be my last post on the blog. I tried to give a
true reflection of the Master year at the Utrecht University School of Economics.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Cheers! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-36293012019454641502013-05-01T06:06:00.000-07:002013-05-01T06:06:01.531-07:00While writing my Thesis...!!<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In order to carry out
the research of my thesis, I have to make use of firm specific data, in this
case from the Worldbank enterprise survey. These data are not publicly
available and can only be used for research purposes, so I had to ask
permission and explain the goal of my research before I gained access to the
enormous dataset. My first task is to filter the interesting data which I can
later use for my regression analysis. During the course of my research I will
have meetings with my supervisor on a regular basis, to guide me through the
process and provide me with helpfull feedback. I started 2 weeks ago, but
haven't seen my supervisor even once. Was he sick, you might wonder, or can't
he be bothered? None of all this is the case. As he is really into modern
communication he prefers to 'meet' on Skype instead of in his office. This has
worked perfectly well so far and we are both very happy with this way of
coummunication. As I mentioned before I have to plan my near future and make a
decision on what to do when my studies are over. I'm consisering to apply for
some traineeships, because I regard them to be the ideal way to get a job in
the current jobmarket. For one of the traineeships I applied for, het
Rijkstraineeship at the Dutch government, I just heard I was selected to
participate in the next round of the application procedure. As this is
something I would love to do, you would understand that I'm currently very
excited about it. I will complete this capacity test next week, so I will be
happy to update you all in my next blog!</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br />
</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Cheers!</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-78626574493237139672013-04-11T07:18:00.003-07:002013-04-11T07:18:59.192-07:00It's Thesis time!<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I will start writing my thesis from next week onwards. The goal of my
research is to assess whether there exists a home market effect for foreign
subsidiaries of multinational companies in developing countries. In short, does
the extent of foreign ownership influence these firms' productivity? If
everything works out as planned I will finish my thesis and therefore my
Masters' studies in about 10 weeks, so I should start thinking about what to do
next. I really would like to enrol in a traineeship-programme. The application
deadline for many traineeships is in the course of this month. This effectively
means that I find myself writing several motivation letters for the most attractive
traineeships, before pimping my CV one last time, hoping to be invited for an
interview or to succeed to the next round of the application procedure. In the
mean time, I’m working out my take home exam for the course Multinational Firm,
which is officially my last exam ever. I’m not so sure if this is exciting or
sad. While writing this blog I once again realize that I'm on the brink of
starting my professional career. But before I will dress up in suit and tie, I
will enjoy every last bit of my life as a student.</span> In my next blog I will tell you all about the
progress I made with my Master thesis research, as well as my quest in search
of a challenging and exciting traineeship.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Cheers!</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-55309363224431944722013-03-11T08:02:00.002-07:002013-03-11T08:02:10.020-07:00Attending the Shell company event and ECU’92’s economic conference on confidence. <br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">As I will be graduating
in the near future, I have to start thinking about what to do after. Although I
don't have a clear future prospect yet, I found it interesting to visit the
Shell company event, which was organized recently at the UCU campus. On the one
hand to get an idea what the company is all about, on the other hand to prepare
a bit for the upcoming job search and the related interview and selection
procedure. It was just this that I liked best of the evening, apart from the
drinks of course. In a workshop with two HR-employees they explained a shift in
selection procedures is currently going on, away from the traditional focus on
the grade lists and board memberships, exchange semesters and other extracurricular
activities, towards a more reflective manner of selection.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">
<span style="background: white;">They believe that if one is able to reflect and
learn from past experiences, this potential employee is also able to apply this
in his/her work, benefitting the company. I find this very appealing.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I recently attended ECU'92's economic conference
on confidence. They managed to attract some very interesting and influential
speakers, of which Arnold Heertje and Sweder van Wijnbergen were certainly most
prominent. Too bad the latter speaker couldn't make it in the end, but it was
fascinating to hear professor Heertje lecturing. At age 73, he is still
unbelievable passionate about economics, and he's able to give a clear overview
of the current affairs. According to professor Heertje, the current consumer
confidence crisis is not only bad at all. Although he acknowledges the negative
side that the economy is not performing well currently, and an increase in
consumer spending rather than saving could help to boost the economy to get out
the crisis. He points at the positive sides of the increased savings by
consumers. He argues that consumers are improving their financial situation by
paying off debts and saving money, which in the future can be applied to
finance new investments by companies, thus stimulating the economy in the long
run. I think this is a very interesting line of thought.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This will be it for now.
Soon I will be wrapping up my last 2 courses of my study career, before
starting to write on my thesis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Cheers!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Lars</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-89494864717413458042013-02-25T08:34:00.001-08:002013-02-25T08:34:33.689-08:00Thesis-Topic-Application-Stress!!!!<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Time flies when you're having fun, and apparently I have had my fair
share lately. Without realizing it all too well I have passed well beyond the
half way mark of the Master programme. I passed both last periods courses,
leaving me with only 2 more courses and a thesis, before I have to start
competing in the job market myself. The course Multinational Firms is being
teached by one of my favourite Profs, and aims at providing state of the art
insights of the current line of thought in economics on the individual firm
level. The other course, Empirics of Globalization, aims at explaining the
global patterns of Globalization over a very long time span. Me and a fellow
student are currently writing on a paper which hopefully can serve as a critique
on a famous paper “The Reversal of Fortune” by Acemoglu, Johson & Robinson.
As I mentioned above, we are approaching the Master thesis rapidly, which meant
we had to subscribe to one of the topics recently. All in all this has been
rather stressful, for various reasons. At the first date, there were some IT
issues which had to be sorted out before students could sign up for their
favourite subject. Therefore the ‘excitement’ was postponed for 3 days, at 9
A.M. sharp. Again, something went wrong with the subscription procedure,
effectively meaning I was refreshing the wrong folder for several minutes, only
to find out the subject picking procedure had started in another folder. When I
finally accessed this folder, my top 3 choices of topics were of course gone,
so I had to look for an alternative. In the end I found a topic and after
subscription I actually felt rather content. I’m going to check whether there
is a home effect for foreign subsidiaries of multinational firms. I came to
realize I liked this topic better than my previous top 3, so it worked out in
that sense, and I’m going to have the supervisor of my choice. All in all I’m
looking forward to writing the thesis, although this will prove to be my final
study assignment at the Utrecht School of Economics. The last part of my study
career will probably also be the busiest, but I will try to post a new blog
regularly to get you an idea what is going on!</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br />
<br />
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<!--[endif]--></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-33075127313808788032013-01-28T02:08:00.003-08:002013-01-28T02:08:47.266-08:00Time flies when you´re busy!!<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB">I know, my
last blog was posted some time ago, but I got an excuse for the delay. The period
after our Christmas holidays has been rather hectic will all the schoolwork due
in January. First, we had to hand in our country reports on selected
Sub-Saharan Countries (Madagascar & Zambia in my case) for the course
Institutions, Growth & Development, with an analysis of their economic
development over the last 50 years. All in all it has been a very interesting
project and to give you a very brief conclusion; the prospects for the near
future look bright for either country. Although, economic development from 1950
till roughly 2000 was characterized by periods of rapid growth, followed by
periods of similar decline, the growth performance from about 2002 onwards has
been very spectacular. The biggest challenge this time is to achieve
sustainable long run growth. In an interactive session we presented our results
in a more detailed way, as did our fellow students. It was really interesting
to see that each case needs a different approach but overall the prospects look
positive. In the meantime, I was supposed to prepare a discussion session with
my project group on the economic impact of the introduction of the potato in
Europe. This all seems rather trivial, but some researchers have shown that the
potato did actually have a very positive impact on urbanisation and total
population growth. Without going in too much detail one of the main underlying
reasons is the high nutritional value of the potato, which coincided with an increase in demand for nutritious food at the
start of the Industrial Revolution. The potato allowed (more) people to live in
cities and work in the big factories, which eventually sparked economic growth
in Western Europe (and the world).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">After all,
these very interesting project assignments were obviously concluded by an exam
for either course, we wrote them last week’s Wednesday & Friday. After our
last exam, it was finally time to relax a bit. We gathered with most students
in our Master’s programme to enjoy the afternoon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">At the end
of the day I realized that we are already half way our Master’s, time flies. I
have two more courses to follow, Multinational Firms and Empirics of
Globalisation, before I conclude my studies with my Master’s thesis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-47295334953366641302012-12-21T04:42:00.002-08:002012-12-21T04:42:19.778-08:00December 21st 2012...<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">We are only with a few students in the Globalisation & Development
track. This is nice, as you get to know all your fellow students way easier
than in larger tracks. We attend the classes with the same small group all the
time, so you start to chat with one another more easily outside class. There
seems to be quite some connection amongst each other as outside Uni activities
are organized all the time. This week there was a gathering together at one
student’s place with food and wine. Another good example of the nice atmosphere
between the Masters students is the snow fight we had after (and between) class
a few weeks ago. The first snowflakes had fallen and everything outside looked
nice and white, a good opportunity for some fun in the snow. Almost all
students in the track joined and it took half an hour before we finally
finished our battle. All in all these things really add something to the
experience of being a student at Utrecht University.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And then to question that has been puzzling a lot of people in meantime:
Is the end of the world really approaching? If the Maya people were right with
their calendar, which would denote the end of the world on the 21th of December
in 2012, the apocalypse of the world would come today and this would
effectively be my last blog for the Utrecht University School of Economics.
However, according to Maya Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú the whole ‘End of
the World’ story is all non-sense, which is only being made up by
sensationalist merchant people. Good news for us, as we are on the brink of
enjoying our well-deserved Christmas break. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">This break will not only mean that I will gather together with friends
and family to enjoy nice food and drinks and open the presents underneath the
Christmas tree. I will have to do some catching up with reading some articles
for the courses I’m currently following and today we will receive our feedback
on the Draft version of our paper we submitted for the course Institutions,
Growth & Development. Hopefully, this will not be the end of the world.
Probably not!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">For now, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy 2013!!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-734368464640538610.post-32883731398435485132012-11-26T10:16:00.003-08:002012-11-26T10:16:39.835-08:00It's the most wonderful time of the year!<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB">When
writing my previous blog, I was just preparing for the exams of Period 1. These
were my first exams for the Masters program International Economics &
Business and I did not really know what to expect from them. It had been a
pretty hectic period altogether, with lots of deadlines and project group work.
To be honest I couldn’t wait for it all to be finished. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">After
two weeks of waiting, we finally received our final grades, and I am glad to
say that I have passed them both. In the meantime the next period has already
kicked off, with some new exciting courses. I am currently following the course
<i>Urban Development</i>, digging into the
theory and challenges behind development in urban areas. The course <i>Institutions, Growth & Development</i>
explores the differences in economic growth patterns across countries and their
underlying reasons. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The main
assignment consists of writing a report on two Sub-Saharan African countries,
Zambia and Madagascar in my case, to find out whether their economic development
is in line with the literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Apart
from the actual studying we got something else exciting going on, namely the
fact that our department of the Masters Program has a certain fund available to
organize study-related activities. One can think of a intriguing guest lecture,
a movie night, meet and great with an institute in the field or even a
conference. We are currently determining what activity would be the most
popular among the students. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Apart
from all these exciting study related topics this period is going to<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a> be an extremely hectic one. First of all, we have to start
thinking about what to do after we finish our studies. In relation to this labour
market orientation process I am attending ECU ‘92’s Economic Career Event, on
the 29<sup>th</sup> of November. Secondly, it is time to determine what courses
to follow in the third period, which is the last term in which I will
effectively be following courses before I write my final thesis. Thirdly, the
deadline for handing in a thesis proposal is rapidly approaching. This is the
option to come up with an own thesis proposal or to write the thesis at a
company.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">As
December is quickly approaching, it is almost time to shave off my contribution
to the Movember movement. <i>In all honesty,
there isn’t much to shave off, but hey, at least I tried.</i> We are slowly
moving towards <i>the most wonderful time of
the year. </i>The days are getting shorter, nights are getting longer, the
temperature is getting colder and the cocoa is getting warmer. Despite all of
this, it is still my favourite part of the year, as the Christmas holidays are upon
us. At the beginning of December I will celebrate Sinterklaas with my family
and some really close friends, so I should start waking up my creative side and
come up with a nice poem and ‘Surprise’. At the end of the month, my family
will come together to celebrate Christmas and I am looking forward to spending
some long awaited family time. Also, I can’t wait to see my mother’s completely
decorated Christmas tree with real candles, bright red balls and an astounding
star at the pinnacle of it all. Finally, we head towards the end of the year
accompanied by the musical prowess of Radio 2’s Top 2000, and obviously the
grand finale: New Year’s Eve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0