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.