Help...!! It is time for the Exams

For the first time this academic year the period of stress has arrived as next week’s exams are rapidly approaching. This requires formidable time management and numerous hours of studying in the library. We are not only supposed to study hard for the exams, we also have the final (combined) paper for the courses Empirical Economics and International Business Ventures due at the end of this week.

Should my social life stop until all these horrific deadlines have passed? My answer is no. I really believe that no matter how busy you are and how much work has to be done, one should always reserve time to relax and ease the mind in order to achieve good results. That is why I do not cancel my football practise on Mondays and Thursdays, because during these 1.5 hours of practise you are able to forget all the difficult econometric formulas and strategic decisions that keep us occupied at school. It also gives me an opportunity to complain about the hard parts of student life (which is obviously utter nonsense) and to get compassion from the team mates that are in exactly the same position. Apart from the training nights I have two football matches scheduled for Friday & Saturday. Should I cancel these then? My answer is no. Although the Friday match will be played near Groningen in my hometown of Bedum and therefore costs me quite some travel time, I really believe it is not harmful for me to go and play. I can spend the 4 hours (2 hours both ways) in the train to study and in the same line of reasoning as above I can ease my mind playing a football match.

The following Saturday another match is scheduled with the student football club Odysseus ’91 in Utrecht, where we will compete against another side from Utrecht: Elinkwijk. For Saturday night, after the football match, the hardest decision has to be made. My girlfriend asked me to come to a Halloween party that a friend of hers organized and I have a really hard time to decline this particular invitation as I know how much fun it is going to be. At the same time I am well aware that a party the weekend before the exam week is not going to increase the productivity of my study efforts the day after. Should I decline the invitation? My answer is no. The solution will be to go to the party and leave early, as a hangover should be avoided at all times. Then I am confident that I will succeed to pass my exams next week. In my next blog I will report how my study strategy worked out and hopefully I will score sufficient grades for my exams and have a blast at the Halloween party.

Cheers!

And we're off, the first steps towards Msc

We are about half way the term as we speak, and so far it has been a really busy one.

What I have learned until now, apart from various new regression techniques and strategy case studies, is that the Master studies differ in a lot of ways from the Bachelor phase.

The level of the courses has increased, the workload seems to be a lot higher and fellow students tend to be more motivated. The courses I’m currently following are Empirical Economics, which builds upon the Econometrics course from the Bachelor phase, and International Business Ventures (or shortly, IBV). We are working on a joint project between the two courses, combining the insights from International Business Ventures with the regression techniques of Empirical Economics.

At the same time we follow a weekly tutorial and lecture for both courses. For the IBV-course, we are supposed to prepare a case study every week and hand it in to the professor. In the tutorial the prof decides randomly who is to present that week, which effectively means you have to prepare a well structured and quality PowerPoint presentation for each case as there is always a chance that your group has to present.

All in all, this is very demanding and exciting at the same time. Due to the continuous stream of assignments and deadlines you are required to plan all your work well in advance, to make sure everything is done in time and is of sufficient quality.     

Therefore, I find myself at school from 9 to 5 more often than not, as if I were already working a regular job and I am approaching the 40-hour study week more than ever, something I considered my worst nightmare during my Bachelor studies ;). But as I said, so far it has all been very exciting, for example dr. Pinna’s classes. His teaching approach is slightly different from other professors. He tries to bring in as much real world business examples as possible, which makes it easier to understand the theory. He also likes to joke around and provides us with practical tricks and tips. His best advice so far: when you are negotiating as a manager, always make sure to check your opponents mood with their personal secretary before you go into any talks. This allows you to alter your strategy if necessary.

Another thing that made me very exited is last night’s Bachelor graduation ceremony. Finally the time was there, completely dressed up in cap and gown,  to collect my Bachelor diploma.

From now on I’m at liberty to use the title Bachelor of Science (Bsc) and in the coming months I’m going to acquire my next title, Master of Science (Msc). I hope you will all follow me on my journey to reach this goal during the remainder of this year.

Best regards,

Lars Bos

A brief introduction!

My name is Lars Bos and I am currently a 5th years Masters student at Utrecht School of Economics (USE). I have been asked to share my experiences during this Master’s year, which will most probably be my last year of studies.

After finishing high school in 2007, I decided to postpone my study career for one year to go on a 8-month backpacking trip to Australia and New Zealand together with my brother. After this year of travels I started my Bachelor study Economics & Business Economics at USE, where I acquired the necessary 180 ECTS within 3 years. Instead of starting with my Master’s right away, I had decided to extend my Bachelor studies with one more year. The first halve of this year, I worked as an intern at the parcel division of PostNL, the largest parcel delivery company of the Netherlands. The second semester, I continued studying in Singapore at the Singapore Management University (SMU) to follow 4 more courses for my Bachelor program and to experience studying in a complete different environment with another culture. When I came back to the Netherlands I had already applied for the Masters program International Economics & Business, track 4: Globalisation and Development. This Masters seemed a natural extension of my Bachelor, as I happened to have followed the economic geography minor where we already discussed a lot of globalisation and development issues, which had catched my interest right away. So, I am very eager to deal with these issues in more depth in the coming year of my studies. I hope for now, I have introduced myself well enough.

I am looking forward to keep on updating you regularly about my experiences during my Master International Economics and Business at Utrecht School of Economics. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to approach me.

Best regards,

Lars Bos     

The art of job interviewing.

Six courses futher and a piece of the thesis already done, the future is knocking on the door today. Skills need to be developed, more knowledge to be obtained and money needs to be made. Where to find this combination? At the labourmarket. Yes you understood it correctly, the labour market, that big and scary thing people talk about in the papers. That place where evil employers hunt down potential employees and subject them to tortures to be sure that they have the best young professional available that they can mould to be their puppet on strings.

A month or two ago I started to think of what I wanted to do after my graduation and started sending my resume to potential employers. And all of a sudden there it was: an invitation for a job interview accompanied with something you might already know: an invitation to make some test to examine you verbal and numerical capabilities and your personality. Although I was nervous for making the tests, I expected the tortures described above, these turned out to be very do-able. One might expect that if one has finished an academic bachelors’ and masters’ degree that one does also pass these tests, although timepressure and nervosity do add an extra, let’s say, dimension to these things.

My very first interview was a big eye-opener. I thought I came well prepared, but it turned out that some questions where more difficult than I expected. ‘You say you are teamplayer, can you give me an example out of which this speaks?’ ‘What is the thing you accomplished that makes you most proud of yourself?’ ‘What is it that you as a unique person are bringing to this organisation?’.

I really had to learn to think of myself as an asset to a company. What is it that I have in me, that others might not have? How do my skills and interests match this specific company? And how can I show or proof this by giving examples? I must say the training of Tempo-Team organized by the University was a very useful event to help me trying to answer these questions. But as they also say, ‘practice makes perfect’, only by doing interviews, one eventually gets trained in it. And the most important aspect of what you bring to a company, is something you cannot change or do anything about, it is you. More and more we get selected based on who we are, if we are a pleasant person to be around. In all the interviews I had so far, there was one point were I just talked and had a laugh with the recruiter sitting in front of me, because we were talking about stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with the job at all. I hadn’t expected to be talking about bad tv-series and ‘de Zwarte Cross’, did you?

Arrivederci e Ci Vediamo….

Exactly two month ago we all had to leave the Eternal City to continue our studies in Utrecht. It’s more than time now for some final words to my stay in Rome and to the Business Minor at LUISS.

The last weeks in Rome

Unfortunately, my exam period already started right after Christmas and ended at the beginning of February. Therefore, as you can all imagine, the last weeks in Rome weren’t that much fun.

Right before Christmas I already wrote my first exam. It was a written essay in Business Organization. This exam was a “pre-appello” which means that it took place before the actual exam period, which was in January and February. Most of the times students get special benefits when they write a pre-appello exam. For instance, for this exam I only had to study the material from the mid-term exam onwards. Therefore, not the whole material was covered in the end-term, which was good for us, because we had to study a bit less and also good for the professor since a lot of people already showed up for the pre-appello. If you have the opportunity to write a pre-appello, always take it!

A few more things you should now about exams at LUISS

There are always three exam dates offered by the professor. Hence, you are very flexible and you can choose yourself if you want to write the exam at the first, second or third date. If you are writing the exam on the first date and it happens that you do not like your grade (because it is to low), you have the possibility to reject the grade and you can take the exam at the second or third date again. If you do not reject your grade, you have to go to LUISS at a specific date to sign your grade. Only after you have signed your grade, you can keep it and it will be registered in Utrecht. We have experienced, that it is always better to take the exam on the very first date. In addition, rejecting grades often does not increase your grade in the second or third try by that much. In addition, you will have oral exams. When I had to take my first oral exam, I was quite nervous, because the whole class is sitting in the classroom where you have your oral exam and it is sometimes a bit noisy in there. However, as soon as it is your turn you will be able to concentrate and forget all the people talking around you.

The very last days

After a six week exam period, we were all quite happy to have finished the last bit of our Minor successfully. This calls for celebration! During the last few days, we partied, went out for dinner to enjoy the last pizzas and gelati with our friends and just appreciated the last rays of sunshine and the city.

It is time to say goodbye

While both of my Dutch flat mates have already left at the end of January, it was my turn to say goodbye at the beginning of February. At the evening before I left, we organized a big final (goodbye) dinner with all our friends in San Lorenzo at San Lollo’s. It was a nice and long, but also a sad evening, since we had to say goodbye to all our Italian friends with whom we shared many personally valuable memories of our year in Rome.

At the 1^st of February I left Rome, but not for good. I have thrown so many coins in the Trevi Fountain that my return is guaranteed :). I left with very mixed feelings. On one hand, I was sad to leave Rome and my Italian friends. On the other hand, I was happy to go back to Utrecht, finally seeing my friends over there again and I was looking forward to cycle. Coming back to Utrecht was a bit like coming back home.

Time is flying by

To round it up, the year in Rome was flying by. The Business Minor and also the time over there have been great! I had the chance to experience living in a Mediterranean country, in a historical metropolis with a very different culture. I have met and gained many friends from all over the world. It was interesting to study at a small, but well known and international oriented university whose university systems is very diverse compared to the one we are used to. I did not only broaden my academic background in Business Economics, I could also grow as a person.

I hope all of you will have a comparable great time and experience in Rome and at LUISS!

P.S.: As promised, a few of my favourite places to go out in Rome……

Clubs:

Goa

Boeme

Art Café & Babel

Circolo Degli Artisti

Qube

Aperetivo:

Momart

Viale 21 Aprile, 19

Freni e Frizioni

Via del Politeama 4-6

Numbs

Corso Trieste

Bars:

Antico Caffè della Pace

Via della Pace 5

Bar del Fico

Piazza del Fico

Gelateria:

Gelateria Bartocci

Via Alessandria, 145

Giolitti

Via degli Uffici del Vicario 40

Best Tiramisu:

Bar Pompi

Via Albalonga 7

Restaurants:

San Lollo

Via dei Sabelli 51

I Butteri‎

Piazza Regina Margherita 28

Gusto Pizzeria & Wine Bar

Via della Frezza and

Piazza Augusto Imperatore

Examtime

Let’s say it’s not the best time of the year, and that while the year just started, exams. After 10 weeks of hard work & just handing in the final versions of your papers, you have to immediatly start revising, repeating, summarizing and whatever is needed to pass your exams.

I think I suffer from a procastination-syndrome, just like everybody else does. I bet every student recognizes him- or herself in having the intension of ‘only focusing on studies this period so that I can pass this course with at least an 8.5’ on the start of every period. This works for a week, maybe two. And then there is sports, work, travelling and your social life. And that is where you start procastinating studies.

Period 2 for me is always the worst, since it follows immediately after period 1. This sounds silly maybe, but because I don’t have retakes, period 3 only follows period 2 after a week of doing absolutely nothing. After period 1, this is not the case, there is no retake week, so one just goes on and on and on. Ofcourse there is the christmas break, so two weeks before that you start saying: I’ll do my cathing up during the break. But in this break one cannot study either since family, eating and drinking obligations keep you from it. Resulting in the fact that the exams get more stressier than they already were.

I have to warn future master students, during your master you worry much more about passing exams and courses. I’m still not sure if that is because your studies have just gone up some levels in difficulty or that you feel you are kind of done studying and want to start your working life. And for that, you kind of really need to get your degree. Wish me luck, everyone, this week I’m taking two more hurdles to reach this degree.

Topicality

Hi Everyone!

Welcome again to another one of my adventures. It's been a while since I've wrote, cause I think last time I did not even receive grades for the first two courses. Lucky for me (and you since I might not have been here writing to you otherwise) I passed both courses! And now I am already very far into the second period.

This period contains somewhat more let's say accurate topics than the first period had to offer. Since I've chosen to do a master onEconomics of Public Policy and Management and public policy is in the papers every single day this is rather normal and I must say I also like it.

Firstly a few weeks ago we talked about pension schemes during the course of Public Risk Management. Since I'm working at an investment agency that offers pension product (in the Dutch third pillar of the pension system) and is soon to position itself on the market with a product in the collective second pillar this topic was highly interesting for me.

Secondly and more in a broad sense, I'm writing a paper on the EU Emission Trading System. The emission trading system that was implemented to fight what is called the biggest market failure of all times, environment damage (mostly due to greenhouse gasses). A few weeks ago I visited a lecture on this topic, since as of january 2012 this system will be expanded to include aviation companies, EU as well as non-EU airlines. From systems competition theory (broadly talkes about in my other course Policy Competition in an International World) it makes no sense that the EU is doing this, since it can have major competitiveness disadvantages! What we're trying to do is answer why the EU is still implementing this and if the policy is sustainable in an international world.

Thirdly, today we had to hand in our thesis subject proposal if we want to pick our own subject instead of picking from a list of subjects offered by USE. Since I wanted to be sure to really write about a subject I was sure I was going to enjoy writing about I thought through some subjects and eventually decided on writing about the reconciliation of work and family life and the division of labour and care between parents. I'd found the right supervisor for this subject pretty quickly and got her approval for supervising my thesis. And while I handed my registration form in this morning, when I read the Volkskrant this evening there was a column of a D66 politician exactly about this subject!

And that's what I like about this master, that these subjects are talked about in the streets and in the papers, and that I actually learn to think about them in an academic way.