On the case

Hi all! Sorry once again for my silence. I felt a bit too drained after my exams to get behind the computer and write. But I've had a full week to recuperate and now I'm back in business. Or at least back in business school... Although it will probably be another couple of weeks before I get back the results from my exams I feel pretty confident that I pulled it off fine. No major concerns there.

Last week we immediately kicked off again for the second term. In this block I will get to do 6 courses in total, in two blocks of three each. In this first block I am doing Strategic Management, Biopharma & Health Technology and Managing People & Healthcare. You can see there is definitely a strong focus on healthcare and with the Biopharma course I even get to see a lot of (semi)familiar terms like bio-engineering and combinatorial chemistry. The emphasis is, however, not so much on how these techniques work but on what sort of results you can expect to get from them and particularly: how much money you can make with 'em!

This block is distinctly different from what we have been doing so far as in that the teaching is not so much textbook based. Instead we get to do what business schools around the world seem to love best: case studies. In practice this means we get to read a lot of information from which it is our job to distill the essences and come up with frameworks/advice/conclusions/etc., depending on the particular case and then present or discuss this in class. I guess the idea is that we can get our hands dirty on some 'real work' without being able to inflict some 'real damage'!
Also, this way a lot of the reading burden has been shifted into the program itself rather than to the pre-examination period. In fact, for only one of these courses do we have an actual textbook. So a bit more work now but hopefully a lot less later on.

I have spent a good part of my weekend scanning the Internet for potential work areas and employers. Although I feel like it's still ages away before I am done here, the college is very much pushing us to look for jobs as early as possible and to help us do so they have set up an entire career department. It's quite amazing to see how seriously they take that responsibility. You mention which field you would like to work in and several people get involved, doing the research for you, helping you write your CV and getting you in touch with people in that area. I must admit I'm duly impressed by it. At least now I know what they are spending my tuition fees on.

I am still very much in the early stages of orientation, trying to figure out my "market value". I am a bit stuck in between being a fresh graduate and being somebody with work experience as my PhD work experience is not directly transferable to the non-academic world. Aside from my interest in working in NGO-type settings, I have also been looking into possibilities in healthcare consulting. At least that way I will be able to pay off my college debt at the end of the year. :) Most of these consulting companies have very arduous selection procedures, involving several rounds of testing and interviewing. One thing they all seem very keen on as well is -guess what- case studies! So I suppose it's a good thing that I will be thoroughly prepared for those after this term.

Alright, it is time for me to attend to my Spanish class. I haven't had any lessons since before Christmas so I am afraid it might be a bit rusty... Those of you I still owe e-mails to, I promise I'll try to write real soon. Hasta luego!

Almost ready

My apologies to all of you who have been keeping a close watch of this blog hoping for more news (that is: both of you...). I know I haven't exactly been very diligent in writing since I first started this but I do have a proper excuse.

As I have mentioned before I have a block of examinations coming up this week and for the past three weeks I have been studying like mad. Poor little me even spent New Year's eve on the sofa, reading my text book on Organisational Behaviour! Not the most fun way to spend an evening, I assure you. Any way, starting tomorrow I will have one exam every day for the whole week. Although I will most likely keep on studying until right before I have to walk into the class room, I am by now feeling fairly confident. There are still a few papers left to read and some exercises to do -particularly for accounting, which continues to haunt me in my dreams- but all in all I think I am more or less good to go.

The system for examinations here is quite different from what I was used to in the Netherlands. Almost all of my exams will consist of a series of essay-like questions from which I can then choose (!) a fixed number of questions. Of course all questions are composed of several sub-questions so you can not completely ignore whole sections of the course material but indeed you can direct your learning more towards some preferred areas. I find this concept a bit weird to be honest because it clearly induces selective learning but on the other hand it is reassuring as well. As those of you who know me well will already have guessed though: I still prepared all subjects. I can't help it; it's in my nature to be an overachiever! :) Now let's hope this won't mean I will have wasted precious time that I could have spent better by being more focused...

My bedroom looks somewhat like a war zone at the moment with stacks of paper in every corner of the room. The plan is that as the week progresses, these stacks will find their way into the proper shelves in drawers again. Unfortunately with all the frantic studying I haven't had much time to start working on my 'extra-curricular' project but I expect that after this week that will get under way as well. Now that I have accumulated all this extra knowledge I should be able to put that to good use!

Alright, I think I will now go spend the rest of my evening trying to get some balances to balance and maybe do some creative bookkeeping. Now if only I could learn how to do my own tax returns...