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.