Impressive levels of motivation

First of all, i must admit that summer is definitely not the best time of the year to study anything. Well, i guess that is clear to everybody. Anyway, at the moment i feel very motivated to study. Hungarian i mean. I bumped in to the blog of this Irish guy who sets very ambitious goals (example of the latest one) when learning languages. The list of languages that he knows already is very impressive and it seems that he has found good ways to study them. I salute to that.

Somehow reading stories like these can really motivate me. After all, the guy seems chipper, positive, down to earth, smart and hard working - many of the qualities that I see in myself too. Well, most of the time :D

So now i am studying very actively Hungarian, mostly vocabulary at the moment. After all, that is the basis to build conversations on. Of course I am trying to learn the grammar too, which really does have some similarities with Finnish. Now it is/would be important to try to actually use the language to lower the barrier of using it. Then maybe when I will land in Hungary in about 3.5 weeks time i am confident enough to start trying to speak it from the first day. Obviously, I will make a lot mistakes and will speak like a retard but thats the way to learn. First you need to learn how to fall before you can learn to walk :) And of course i have the benefit of having SOME relations with Hungarians already. At least they can get good laughs from my weak attempts :D

Thesis under way!

Finally I managed to pull myself together and started working on my thesis. Today I just made the basics, thought about the structure, the research questions and so on. If the basis is good the work will be easier.


One thing that I was amazed was the margins (according to LUT School of Business guidelines): top 3.5cm, left 5.0(!!!!!!), right 2.0cm and bottom 2.0cm. What on earth is that 5 cm doing in there??? Also the 3.5cm of top margin seems a bit too much... Well, at least filling a page with text is easy, it takes just 5 words.

Little update

Yesterday I booked my flights to Hungary for my exchange. I am flying there 14th of August, a healthy 3 weeks before the school starts. In that time it would be cool to see some other parts of Hungary besides Budapest. I think it can be arranged :)


Otherwise I am still procrastinating with starting the thesis process. Last couple of days I've been trying to deal with my iPhone replacement since it broke down (already months ago) and the operator/manufacturer is not going to give me a new one. Comparing electronics sucks.

Finnish weather explained

Link (in english and hungarian)

Thesis supervisor

This morning the whole class of MITIM '11 received an email from LUT stating our preliminary supervisors for our Master's thesis'. My supervisor wasn't a big surprise.

However, what really sucks is the timing of this email - now most of the professors are already on vacation and will be back early August. What this basically means is that a student who would want to start working on the thesis needs to wait until August before starting the writing process - otherwise there is a big possibility that the direction of the work will be off and a major part of the work done during the summer goes to waste. Which is obviously not cool at all.

Anyways, I will send email to my potential supervisor and try to arrange a meeting. If that can't be done I will take the risk and start working on the thesis already next week. During this summer I have lots of time, so it would be a waste not to use it for this project. Progress on the thesis means less stress about it later on - and more time to focus on studies and other activities during the fall.

Public defense for MITIM '10

The second year MITIM students have the public defense of their thesis's tomorrow at LUT. I'm planning to go to see at least a few of them so that I know what to expect in about one years time.

New structure for MITIM program

I just stumbled upon on the new structure of MITIM program, which applies to students starting their journey in MITIM next fall. It can be seen here. 


There are some changes in the courses, few are added and some are taken away. Examples of courses that wont exist to new students are Supply and Innovation management, Economics of innovation. Some new courses are Organizational behavior, Strategic management and Business processes management and information technologies.


In a way I like the new core courses, those are some of the topics that we did not cover in extent this year. Also, the structure seems to be a bit less messy and the topics more concrete in a way. Well, at least from course name point of view.... I am curious to hear/read about the experiences of new MITIM students on how those courses pan out.