On my studies

Again a post long overdue... My apologies! It seems that I really am no less busy here than I was in the Netherlands most of last year. And to think I feared I would be bored here...

To be fair I have myself to blame for it, mostly. Currently I'm trying to do 40 EC in half a year - which my coordinator may have strongly advised against, and actually hadn't seen pulled off thus far... But I really like the courses! Save for that I would like just a bit more engineering in there, they match what I was hoping for very, very nicely.

My study is naturally a bit schizophrenic - at times it doesn't really know whether it's about biology, or maybe product assessment, or urban engineering perhaps... But that's basically no different from me at all, so that's perfect.

Currently I have courses in aquatic ecology (which includes lake and stream restoration and such), statistics, lifecycle impact assessment and business management. Yes, here too they like to include courses that are from beyond the study's main focus.

There's differences too though, to the Dutch system: It might be the relatively small class sizes (in one we're with 12, and there are five people teaching us), but the teachers are really quite "easy going". If I'd go and ask for an examination to be moved to another date because it doesn't work out for me, and they'd probably actually seriously consider it. The downside to this is that important dates unfortunately aren't really known up to maybe a month or two ahead, which in my case makes planning for Christmas kind of hard. But you do feel very welcome to go ahead and ask questions, or even just have a chat with the teachers, which is awesome.

It's also interesting to see that this university has such a different focus within a topic than say Utrecht University. I know that if I got any ecology class there, the basic predator-prey equations will quite definitely be in one or more of the first lectures. Here, there's none of that - the closest thing was probably the bit about there being "bad guys", of which there's usually too many, and "good guys" of which we want more to reduce the number of bad guys. Also, amazingly, I haven't seen any computer model regarding the environment yet. On the other hand, I do know a lot about marginal suppliers and avoided impacts now, which I never got taught about before.

Of course relatively speaking, the Dutch and Danish systems are practically the same. In some cases in Poland, apparently, class is basically the teacher's tiny kingdom, where everything is strict and in accordance with rules initiated 30 years ago. And I was told that in Latvia they still use some Soviet curricula...

As for how things are for me now, well, they're good. The past few weeks were especially hectic, as we had to submit the first version of our research report, and I had to do a presentation and submit another report. Also, the weekend before the deadlines I went to visit Hamburg with a friend, so that added to the stress a bit... Now I officially have vacation, but they gave us this exam assignment that we have to submit right after the holidays, so I didn't get that much free time this week either so far. But since we finished it mostly already, this Friday I should be off at least!