Graduation days over

We had our graduation days last Thursday in LUT and Saturday in St.Pete. I was one of the few lucky ones who got the diploma also from GSOM (only 5 non-Russian students got it...). For the rest, they are now entering the nostrification process again with their freshly printed Finnish Masters. Graduating from Russia shouldn't be a problem, but it will take some time. I really do hope that everyone will get their double degree.

The ones who didnt get the GSOM diploma, got just a transcript of records. Lousy ones that is. For example on one student the contact hours during the course was according to the transcript something like 4700 which is obviously ridiculous. Also the grades weren't right for most courses and some courses were twice on the list while some where missing. Ridiculous.

Russian graduation ceremony was definitely more ceremonylike than that at LUT. Started well, before it collapsed in to pieces (because of taking photos, unorganized ending etc). All the graduates wore the gowns which was a cool experience. Kinda felt like Harry Potter - especially since we got also the school mascots which is an owl.

Good memories from that day as well as from the whole program. From academic point of view I am a bit disappointed, but as a life experience MITIM has been truly awesome.

Thesis evaluation

Today we got the final grades of our thesis also from LUT. Here are my results from GSOM and LUT:

• GSOM: 4/B (Best would have been 5/A. These are different numbers, other is Russian, other international. So from both I got the second best)
• LUT: Magna cum laude abbrobatur (3rd best out of 7 grades, basically an 8 in the scale of 4-10)

I am happy with both of those grades, especially since I really didn't spend THAT much time on the thesis. Basically this level was my goal and I achieved it. No complaints. :)

Last time i sit between these two in a seminar/classroom

I had my thesis defense yesterday. It went well overall and i am pleased with it especially considering my levels of tiredness during the whole day. Most of us LUT MITIM people have already presented, only 3 more presentations before we are all done and will hear our final results.

Currently I am sitting between Shot and Seb and just realized that this really is the last time when we are sitting in the same seminar/classroom together side by side. But definitely not the last time we will be in the same place at the same time together. Guaranteed.

Oh yeah, also got feedback about my thesis

..but not from my own supervisors, but another professor from GSOM. Still haven't heard anything from my LUT supervisor - will be interesting to hear what he has to say...

Anyways, I didn't quite understand how my work was graded, as on the scale from 2-5, I had on most criteria 2 of the grades bolded (no other way of separating the result). Also, didn't get any kind of recommendation for final grade (except "deserves a good grade" which would mean 4), which would have been nice to see.

Tomorrow I will be a bit smarter regarding the grade.

And I will also be tired since I decided to sleep one more night in Joensuu before heading to Lappeenranta. My train leaves after 6 o'clock in the morning.. Will be fun. But it just was easier solution to do like this.

All ready for public defense

I just finished my slides for the public defense. I am not completely sure about the balance of the presentation - i had to cut the individual case analyzes in order to have enough time for the other stuff. Not perfectly pleased about that, but i guess it will be fine.

I uses mainly my slides from the pre-defense, but made some changes in the order and content of them. Also added a bit of eye candy. :)

Tomorrow I will be done with the whole stuff. That's a relief.

After that: focusing on making money.

Final steps of Thesis and the whole MITIM experience

This Monday I handed in the final version of my thesis. I am satisfied with it, but its definitely not a remarkable piece of science. But, considering the amount of hours and effort I put in to it, I think it is fine.

So the paper version of it already left to Russia (with bunch of other documents), while today I printed 2 more copies of it and took them to be bound for LUT. Those should be ready next week on Thursday. 

After that, there is only the matter of thesis defense and 2 graduation parties. Not a lot of left...

Thesis deadline closing

In less than 2 weeks I should hand in the final version of my thesis. Not much left to do, but absolutely no motivation at all to do the little things required.  As an additional "bonus", I havent heard anything from my supervisors. I got some generic comments from my LUT supervisor during pre-defense but nothing at all from GSOM. With her I have talked 15 minutes about my thesis and thats all....  I will send one more email and ask for comments.

But, at the moment it seems that not a lot of supervisors will be mentioned in the acknowledgements... 

About pre-defense and other stuff

So pre-defense was last week. My presentation was okay I guess. The feedback I got was kinda not saying much or anything that concrete (except to work a bit more on my findings). Now my findings were kind of obvious. But hey, they are kind of obvious so what should I do? Make them outliers and discard them? :D Okay, maybe I should have spent more time back in the day to work on my interview questions but those are really based on the theory and my supervisor gave his blessing to the list and did not recommend any additions or changes.

I got a C from my presentation. A bit disappointed with that, but really wasn't a surprise. Still aiming for B as my final grade.

Pre-defense day

Pre-defense should start in a couple of minutes. Room is already full of people, some looking a bit nervous. Almost all are looking tired. The groups are different than in previous seminars, meaning I wont be able to see the presentations of some familiar faces, but then again I will see some that I have never seen before which is nice. Sooooo niiiice.

I am presenting after the lunch at 13:00. Pretty happy with my slides, although I must be a time-nazi to make it fit in to 20 minutes. During my last practice run my presentation lasted 20 minutes and 30 seconds.

There is no clock in the room....

Now I have reached intermediate level in Russian

...not really.

But that was one of the goals of MITIM for all students - to reach good level in another foreign language during the program.

And how many managed to do that? My guess from LUT students: 0.

Last seminar done from my part

The presentation was ok, but i really need to practice my presentation before pre-defense. I also got some good comments from the audience and our LUT professor who was present. A BIG difference between the quality of her comments compared to those of her GSOM colleague (LUT one being way better).

But there is one thing that I dont understand at all. Again, almost half of the students from GSOM side are missing from our seminargroup*. I don't really get the whole thing - these should be compolsory for all of us, but it appears not to be the case. So why on earth do we do these then if you can skip these without any penalty? Doesnt make sense to me...

Also, it seems that we dont have a lunch break today either, just as the last time... I will be one hungry hippo traveling back to Finland. Two words: Bad organization.


* Most of the students did turn up to the seminar at some point, but majority was late or spent only a part of the day with us. I think it is disrespectful to people who spend their whole day in the seminar as it should be as well as to people doing the presentation.

Its kinda close but still no panic

We have our pre-defence in just 3 short weeks. At the moment I still lack most of the analysis for my empirical part. And theoretical part would need some beefing up too...

But I am not worried. At all.

• Its only a presentation - you don't have to have the whole thesis written
• I still have 3 weeks to work on it (even though I will be spending one week of it in Hungary...). On Friday I analyzed one interview (added ~6 pages to my thesis). So, these can be done quickly.
• Analyzing and creating theories is actually fun. Much more than doing research...

At the moment I have conducted 3 interviews. I would still need a couple more to reach my target (5). I know that the sample would be very small then too - but enough to make some educated suggestions for future research and to get a glimpse how the reality is in small enterprises.

Thesis update

In 25 minutes I will have my first interview for the thesis. Kinda interested to see what kind of material will I manage to collect. The question-list is pretty good and I should be able to get all the necessary information that I need for my study.

This is when the real research actually begins!

I will be moving. Again.

Last weekend I applied for a flat from Lappeenranta and to my surprise I was offered one this Friday. So, most likely during next weekend I will be going there for one last hurrah until the end of May. After that... Who knows where I will be.

Things have been quite slow on the thesis front for a couple of weeks already. I kinda lost my groove for that, but yesterday I did some more research and now I have good material to continue plowing onwards. I also have a phone conference set up with my supervisor for next Thursday, but I will ask to push that a bit forward so that we could have it face-to-face after I have settled in LPR. I am a bit concerned about the empirical part, i.e. where do I find the companies for the interviews. I will go and ask around in the Technopolis Lappeenranta - I am quite sure that I will find success with my interview request if I manage to sell my idea to them. And that, I will of course do :)

First update from Finland. Well, during this year.

My time in lovely Budapest is over. Well, for this set. I am sure I will go back there. For the last 1.5 weeks I've been living at my home in Joensuu. It is kind of weird to be back living with my parents, since I haven't been doing this a lot in last 8 years or so. However, most likely I will move out here if I get a decent flat from Lappeenranta.

The main reason for going there would be to spend some time with the mitim-people. I don't see any thesis-related benefits at all if I do go there. The sad thing is that already this semester and especially after it, the roads of us mitim '11 students will go separate ways and we will spread around the world. So, spending time with some of the co-students would be cool - afterwards it will be harder and will most likely always require organizing. Bleoooh.

On a positive note, we will meet already this week since we have a thesis seminar at LUT on Friday. All of us needed to send the current copies of our thesises to our supervisors who should be at the seminar to give us some comments about them. I haven't worked on mine since the submission and do not intend to do so. A little break from that project is needed. But, starting next week its on again. At the moment I have approximately 30 written pages, all theory. Really should not be too much of a problem to get this project done before May.

Anyways, can't wait to meet other mitim people. Few more days to go.

Making progress

Tomorrow I will break the 20 page threshold with my thesis, at the moment I have about 18 pages written. I should be pretty much done with the first draft of theoretical part by the beginning of February as requested.

I've also been listening to Hungarian quite a bit during this week. My goal is to listen about 1 hour each day for 6 days a week. Next week I will also incorporate some written exercises to supplement the listening comprehension stuff. Since I am listening the same clips over and over again (approx 25-30 times per week, 6 clips), I am really starting to recognize the words immediately without problems. And the best thing is that I can also reproduce many of the sentences and structures on demand. Granted, the texts are still quite simple, but it feels good to see some progress. Lets hope the same continues when I gradually move in to more challenging texts. Feeling optimistic!

Hustle time

I learned yesterday that we have to have our first draft of theoretical part of our thesises ready in the beginning of February. Of course I had seen the info before, but totally forgot it. So time to start hustling!

At the moment I have written about 11-12 pages of ready text, so I need about 30-35 more pages. to do that, I have about 3 weeks of time meaning I should write approx. 10 pages per week. Definitely doable, but not ideal.

Anyways, back to work. I have huge goals for this spring so now action really matters.

Globetrotting 2010 in retrospect

I realized that I've been around quite much during 2010. Overall the whole year has been a good one, almost bordering great. During 2010 I had LOTS of new experiences and I saw way more than I thought I would. Some highlights in numbers:

• Had address in 3 different countries (Finland, Hungary and a couple of days in St.Pete, Russia)
• Visited or lived in 6 countries (Russia, Finland, Hungary, Mexico, Italy, Slovakia).
• Had overall 17 flights (oops, sorry about the carbon footprint...)
• Studied 3 languages (Russian, Spanish for a couple of weeks, Hungarian)
• ....and spoke or tried to speak 5 (previous + Finnish and English. Also few lines of Swedish)

My only gripes about the year was the summer - great weather, but not good from financial or career point of view. But, as often happens, there is a silver lining to everything. Because of the relaxed summer, I had lots of time to think about my future and things that I want. Now I know where to aim. If things go as planned, 2011 will be a year of major changes and achievements. 

I am sure 2011 will be a great year for me!