School - A year reflected

Well school is out and summer has been in full swing for the last few weeks. I made it through my first year of graduate school. The first year has been filled with a mixture of highs and lows.

The first semester went fairly well and started off with meeting many new people from all over. I got involved with some group work with a few friends and wrote a marketing that was epic to say the least. It was a great experience writing with others on such a detailed document (50 pages). I will say it was by far the longest project I have ever had to write and was basically a warm up to my eventual 80 page master thesis. Other than that it was great getting to know many people and building new friendships through various social activities. The semester ended and grade wise turned out fairly well for me as I scored above average on most of my exams.

This last semester has been a bit disappointing considering the expectations that I had after the first semester. The classes that I was enrolled in had an interesting subject but due to poor teaching they lacked all around and I often found myself very unmotivated in every way. I would say that because of this my grades fell slightly compared to the first semester. The grading in Denmark is extremely subjective compared to what I have experienced throughout my entire schooling career. Compared to the multiple choice format that most of my undergrad consisted of, the Danish system of 1 final exam for your grade is pretty crappy. It is my belief that the Danish system tests not your knowledge of a subject, rather the speed in which you can recall the knowledge. I found this to especially be true for the 2 oral exams that I had. The type of questions they ask you are sometimes difficult to understand right away or often require some sort of deeper thinking. However since these exams have such limited time, if you do not fire answers out quickly then the censor and examiner do not think you know what you are talking about. They then precede to ask you extremely easy questions and do not really challenge you. This results in a low grade.

The second semester also brought much frustration in form of a 60 page business project. I worked with the same group from the first semester however due to difference of opinions the group felt much tension. I felt that I spent more energy at times trying to keep the group from fighting or biting my tongue than actually focusing on the task of writing a great project. The longer the project went on the worse is got and by the last week it was practically pure torture for everyone. The end result had very brief flashes of greatness but overall was a flaming piece of shit that our adviser and censor described as "unrealistic" and "in need of a reality check". Needless to say my frustration peaked shortly after my grade was given. I could easily pass blame but really at this point there is no point. I know that working with others cant always be sunshine and rainbows and I just need to move on from this. There is no point in ruining friendships over a project and in the future I will just choose to do more on my own or find a different group.

I guess the importance is passing. As I have always believed that although grades are important in certain aspects, they are not everything. Common sense and life experiences are just as if not more important. Often it seems those who bury themselves in books get top grades but miss out on the rest of life. As I do not think I have ever been in danger of not passing a class and that I have gained knowledge and learned some things throughout the years, I will continue with this belief and personal philosophy. So its safe to say I have not wasted my time or money.

I am looking towards the fall which I think will be much more exciting. I will be taking classes of my choosing which will consist of 3 classes surrounding business sustainability and 1 class that deals with how consumers remember advertising. It is more of a psychology business class. It instantly caught my interest as I wish I would have minored in psych during my undergraduate studies. Anyways the year is over and all I can do is move on and try to better myself and continue to improve and create study habits that will allow me to succeed next year.