Technology management exam

....Was one of the most stressful exams I've ever been in to. Seriously. 60 minutes and 20 questions, many of which required drawing. Mind map, functional process map, process flow, modeling MITIM studies based on queuing theory, Pareto principle illustration... Also I had to calculate for ABC analysis and queuing theory. On top of these there were open numerous open questions, some of which were quite easy and short, some required more effort to answer properly.

Of course, when there is on average only 3 minutes for questions you can not expect too in depth answers. I think I did pretty decent job in the exam and hopefully will get a good mark. At least I managed to answer all the questions (with few minutes to spare) which wasn't the case for all others.

Well, we'll see tomorrow because the teacher promised to send the results around noon.

Preparation for technology management exam

We have an exam on technology management tomorrow morning. So today, I have been mainly focusing on preparing for that. I've read all the slides and made mind maps, also done the practice exercises to the exam with friends and learned the answers.

Since it is an open book exam (you can bring books and laptop with you to the exam) I have been making sure that I know where to quickly find the relevant information during the exam. Since time might be an issue - we have 60 minutes and the exam has 20 exercises! And those are not such small ones either, quite often during the in-class assignments we had to draw mind maps, flowcharts, GANTT charts etc. Those kind of exercises are awaited also in tomorrow exam.

So far I have 37/40 points, maximum number of the course is 100. Not a bad place to go to exam.

Brief visit to Finland

I was in Finland from Friday evening till this morning. We arrived back to St.Pete just after 6 o'clock by bus. The reason for the visit was quite amazing, but on the other hand not that surprising at all - Russian bureaucracy. I didn't have any problems with that (this time), I just decided to help someone who had and went there for the company.

Helsinki was.... Well, boring. I lived there for two years, but now going back there in after just few months absence I could see that it's not a city for me. I was really amazed how dead the city actually was on Saturday night! I mean. There was basically no-one on the move after 7 o'clock. The weather wasn't that bad neither it was that cold.

Yeah, moving abroad after graduation is more and more likely option for me...

But of course there are good things about Finland and Helsinki too. Small, but cool things. Like the amount parks and the ability to drink water straight from the tap :D And almost everything works there without too much problems. Unlike in Russia..

Back at the uni

Today we resumed back to university, which is nice. The day just started with a in-class test of managerial economics, which went okay for me considering the fact that I started preparing for it about 00:30 A.M yesterday :D

At the moment, we don't have any clue when we will have the classes that were cancelled earier this week.

Later on today we will rock da house in TM class when every group is going to present the Innov8 game results. Yeah, game.... Which didn't make that much sense. Another thing that does not make sense is the fact that everyone will have to make presentation including pretty much the same things. So, we are going to put emphasis on the way how to present. I bet most of the people will be surprised :D Hahahahah.

Quarantine continues

Just got an email from GSOM persons saying that our quarantine continues until Wednesday. They are hopeful that it is the last day when we have to stay away from the school. I don't actually know who is the party that dictates that we are not allowed to go to university. Something way beyond GSOM.

This whole situation has 2 faces, as usually is the case. On the one hand this rocks, because now we have enough time to finish our projects and prepare for some exams that are upcoming. On the other hand... This has totally destroyed the groove that many of us had. There is no sense of urgency anymore in our studies and that just makes it possible to slack a bit. Or more than just a bit. One bad thing is that, because of these cancellations, we will have the classes later on. Which just means that the tough times are moved somewhere in the future. Not cool. Especially when we will have tests quite soon. And also, some of my friends are coming to visit St.Pete in few weeks, so it sucks if I have to be at university studying my ass off instead of spending time with my friends.

Now I am in quarantine

Okay, so there has been one outbreak of swine flu on our MITIM '11 group. The person has been sick for more than a week and has been in hospital/home quarantine for one week now. Today, the report from doctor indicating that the person is sick was sent to GSOM. As a result, according to Russian legislation, our classes has been officially cancelled for this Saturday and Monday. On Monday, GSOM will see if there is a need to extend the quarantine. According to the ruling, there should be minimum 7 days since of quarantine since the outbreak has been confirmed.

So it could well mean that we will miss all week of school because of that.

It's a bit funny, because we should now also be in quarantine for the weekend here at the dormitory. We should stay in and not go anywhere. But of course, that is not going to happen because it is insane. I mean. The person who has the swine flu has already been in hospital and in quarantine at home for week. So how on earth could we have gotten the decease from that person?

But well, legislation is legislation and I guess we will just have to adapt to the situation. Lets just hope that we can go back to school on Tuesday, because there is not that much left of this semester and any delays in the classes now will just result to more insane end of the semester. As if the current one is not tough enough.

Other MITIM-blogs

Just added links to some other MITIM-blogs that I am aware of. You can find them on the right hand side of the blog. For more rants, I suggest you to read Shots blog. She is the endless fountain of those :D

For Finnish blogs, turn to Pasis and Elisas blogs. Elisa also writes in English.

And I did not miss SZ either...

Mmmkay, this is going to be ugly

Disclaimer: this is going to be a rant. If you are not interested in reading negative post, then don't read it.

Then to the issue itself. I am now sitting in a research seminar. The idea of this would be to think about our thesis's or dissertations. Which are due in about 1.5 years and should be started maybe one year after today. One year. And still we are here in the classroom listening to these presentations about whatever. Okay, that's not that bad. But the thing that this guy is expecting us to write some kind of research proposals soon for our dissertations....

WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT ARE OUR TOPICS YET!

...and its very nearly impossible to know them at this point. So what is the point of doing some research proposals when you know they don't have any value for anyone? I have no idea.

But that's not all. The teacher is expecting us to write a blog about our thesis's, start using Google calendar with all the milestones and as a cherry on the top of all this make a 5 minute YouTube video about our thesis proposal! Hahaha.

Video. About thesis proposal.

How is that going to help me with my thesis? How is that going to make me write or finish the work with better results? How will all that bring extra value for my research?

The thing is: it doesn't. All it does is to help me waste my time doing some stuff that does not make any sense, does not help in any way and does not bring any value to anyone.

I mean. I have already written one master's thesis and I know what the process is like. I know what are the parties that are interested in the research (yourself, university, company), what helps in the process and what does not. And frankly, none of this bs what we are doing now does not matter at all.

Tiredness

You can quite easily see, that this month is not easy for us students of MITIM-programme. Most of us has been quite busy lately which has lead to a situation where good night sleep has been the suffering party. For example yesterday at 1:15 a.m. there was still 7 of my classmates (whos contact information i have) in Skype. I don't even want to estimate the total amount of us who were still awake.

And today, the classes started at 9 (as usual) which basically means waking up after 7 o'clock. Not that much sleep per person...

Tiredness could be easily seen today in the classroom. I was sitting for a while in the first row (yeah, imagine that) next to the wall where I could easily see other peoples faces. Most of them were tired or at least looked tired. Some were almost sleeping, or slept for a while :D

Now I really need to take a nap.

Monday evening activity

After finding that we don't have anything to prepare for tomorrow, I used this opportunity to study some Russian. There was again something like 1.5 week break in language studies for me because of seminars and other obligatory stuff that needed to be done. Of course, we have been really busy otherwise also with the studies....

Also went to the gym, which was good. It always has a positive effect on my mood and energy levels, but since there is so much other things to do, sports have gotten lower priority too often. Trying to pick that up again. (Last time in the gym was on last Thursday, so not bad)

6-1 for the new guy

This morning we had a "guest lecture" in Technology management class. "Guest" because the visiting professor is from LUT, not from GSOM. He is teaching about open innovation, and today he started by going through very well the history of technology management while giving good examples. Few new terms and concepts were also introduced. The cool thing about that guy is that on top of the fact that he seems to really know what he is talking about, he really has EXPERIENCE about those issues. Unlike SZ....

I mean really. That guy was so much more interesting and in so many ways better than the other teacher from this class. The only good thing that is going for SZ is that in her classes it is impossible to sleep. Because you are constantly amazed about what bs she is teaching and what is the word that she has now been looking for 15 minutes. Of course, I didn't have any problems staying awake on today's classes either despite the fact that I slept 5 hours last night... IF the professor is good, you will learn, stay interested and awake.

Next week in numbers

Wow, this has been quite intense day overall. But really happy that I/we were able to finish 2 projects today and made some good progress on the third. But.... Here comes some numbers about next week:

6 - the amount of days when we have classes (Mon-Sat)

7 - amount of hours I will spend at school every day in the classes (overall 42 hours)

2 - the number of classes that I know will be total waste of time before hand (Methods of business research & Research seminar)

5 - the average amount of sleep in hours I will get per night

1 - presentation

2 (okay, for the second time) - already agreed group meetings during next week

0 - relaxed days

This is how we roll now. Quite busy days, especially considering that we also need to work on at least 2 different projects and also very probably prepare for some classes by reading cases and articles beforehand.

Makes it even more stupid that we didn't study that much during September. Nice planning A....

Group work, group work, group work

Woke up at 9 0'clock today, started working on Technology management group work 15 minutes later. Finished around noon, ate something little, started working on Corporate social responsibility presentation. Finished around 4 o'clock, took a little break (prepared for meeting..), had a Skype session with few group members related to Knowledge management project. Really pleased with the progress we made on that. Finalized the model we created, prepared document, sent to all group members. It was already more than 7 pm.

Like WTF?

Took a girly 15 min shower. Realized that I haven't eaten anything proper whole day, made a quick dinnerish kind of food. Ate.

Really braindead.

Actually totally braindead.

Went out to walk in the foggy weather with a good friend. Came back after 2.5 hours. Now feeling good.

Being busy or something

It's been many days since the last update. Ooops. Well, a lot of stuff has happened and somehow updating the blog hasn't been on top of the list of priorities. Quick recap of the past days:

- Lots of classes and tests. Classes on management of intellectual capital (MIC) and managerial economics (ME). In-class tests for the both subjects. For MIC the test was actually(!) mid-term and its weight on the overall grade is 30%. Not a small test then. I think it went pretty well for me, somehow it just felt too easy. In ME we had second quiz in the class, not a great success for me. I think I scored only 2/5. :/

- Group work project work for almost class that we have.

- Birthday party on Thursday. One of the most memorable bday parties I've ever had! I share the bday with a fellow student, Hungarian David, so we had a combined party arranged by the Hungarian posse. Lots of cool people, lots of beer (Thanks guys for the present: 26 cans of beer! :) All of them had one character in and they said "Dear Joona, happy birthday!" which equals to 26 characters :)), good company, freaking delicious Hungarian food. Whats not to like. Also, the pink tissues and kinder egg with a pink car inside were so cool :D

- On Friday we had MITIM research seminar where there were representatives from few large multinational companies (Intel, Nokia, Microsoft, Sato, ULS group, Human search) telling about current business climate and challenges as well as future trends especially in IT and technology management. Afterwards there was a cocktail reception with the same people and some of our professors, during which we got the chance to really get insights from the business representatives which was cool. Overall really cool event (and offered an opportunity to suit up :D)

- Today we had presentation skills seminar. Quite a waste of time in a way, even though it is good to think about this kind of stuff time to time. 7 hours was waaaayy too long time for this kind of event.

- Also, today we had a blackout. A colleague of mine was stuck in the elevator for 3 hours in the dark....

So, many things have happened. Next week is going to be even crazier! I don't have the energy to go through it now, maybe I'll post update tomorrow. But lets just say as a teaser, that we have again school from Monday to Friday....

Oh the future managers

Today we had a pretty okay snowfall here in St.Pete. Of course, one of the exchange students thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to have some kind of snowball-fight :) Because most of us live in 2 different dormitories, it was quite easy to get some kind of rivalry on and get people excited about this. The battlefield was the nearby hotel Park Inn where we met for a little "playful" match. Unfortunately only a few persons arrived from S dormitory (because they are chickens) so we had to split the teams differently. Nevertheless, the fight was so much fun and everyone got their share of snow and smiles. :) Definitely worth being wet from toes to the top of my head.

Highly recommended :)

Un-be-lie-vable

This is the first time I am blogging from the class (if I remember correctly). This Quantitative methods of business research course is such a piece of crap! On top of the fact that the teachers level of English is sub par (worse than students') she is now also trying to make us do work for her company. For free. She is now asking volunteers to be her assistants. Ahahha.

Been there, seen a portion of it.

Today early in the morning we came back from Moscow. We spent few really cool days in there and managed to see some of the things that Moscow is famous for like Duma, the red square etc. It was so lucky that we had the chance to stay at a real Russian home in there (courtesy of A) and that we had locals as our guides in there. Thank you all guys!

I am not going in to lenght what all we did there. Let's just say that it is definitely a place worth visiting and I am planning to go there again.

When we came out of the train this morning (5 o'clock...) and took a taxi back to the dormitory I really felt like I came back home.

Going to Moscow

I am leaving this evening from St.Pete to Moscow. Taking a night train with a couple of other students. Few of them are from Moscow, so we will have some locals in there which is cool. They were also kind enough to accommodate our group to their apartments. The trip is going to be quite a short one, we are coming back here early on Monday morning. But, still better to go there even for a few days than not go at all.

Some russki-style to my life

I have been here in St.Pete now for more than 2 months. During that time I haven't had my hair cut even once, although the need for a haircut have been there for about one month. Well, today I succeeded in getting a haircut. Nothing new (but maybe a little bit of mullet :D), but I am quite relieved to have gotten this one over with. The problem has been that there are not that many hairdressers in here that speak english. And it is quite retarded to ask someone to come to be our translator for your haircut... So today I went with a translator to a place nearby our university, where they actually did speak english (this time, last time no one did speak...).

It feels cool not to look like a homeless person anymore.

Flat in Lappeenranta

I also got an apartment from Lappeenranta for the spring semester during this weekend. I will move to my dear friends apartment while he goes on exchange to Italy. The place should be mine from the beginning of February till the end of May. This is not confirmed by LOAS just yet, but I don't think there is too much problems with that.

This arrangement suits my needs perfectly :) Thihihi.

Visa and passport

Yup, I have forgotten to tell that I did get my visa and passport back last Friday. I guess I could have gotten them a bit earlier, but since I am not planning to go to Finland any time soon there was no rush for me to get them. One place where I am going though is Moscow. I'll be leaving Piter on Friday and will come back here early on Monday morning.

Halloween

Yesterday I was in Halloween party for a first time. I went there as a corporate asshole (Halloween suit-up!). A bit lame costume, but hey, Halloween is quite lame happening to me :D The first part of the evening was spent at one of the exchange students apartment nearby our dorm before we headed to center. When we got there, I didn't actually feel like going clubbing so instead chose a more peaceful option of just going to this chilling bar with a friend before coming back to dormitory. Another fun evening in here.

Note to myself: If needing a costume for next Halloween or whenever go as an emo-kid (great idea from "Rudfia" :)), a doctor (for the nurses :D) or then just keep suiting-up (because that is cool ).

Today in schedule: Russian studies and reading a couple of articles for tomorrows class.