Feelings from the first lectures and some thoughts

Hallo oder Hello again!

The first two weeks of Uni (in German university is Universität, shortly Uni) are over now… Dahmn, I’m already starting mixing English and German:) First marks of that:
- I write nouns always with capital letters
- I write the verb always in the end of the sentence
- I replace ‘c’ with ‘k’
- I write everywhere the letter combination “sch”
- I write often “najaa”
- I use other German words in my sentence
Yeap, German is a funny language:)

So the start of the Uni (with a capital letter:). So now the real “fire test” is over:) Before I was asking myself a lot how I would manage with my German in the lectures. When I don’t understand the regular people talking, how could I understand when the professors talk about management topics? And after all I knew zero German management words…

The first studying week at the Uni (again with the capital letter:) started on Monday 16.10 with a German course. After my one-month-long German intensive Course I still (for my own surprise:) didn’t had perfect German. Therefore I thought to take a German language course. This course seems to be quite nice as I know 6 people from 15 from the intensive course.

On Monday I also had my first “real” lecture in German (auf Deutsch). That was course called: “Management of Internationaler Industrieanlageprojekte”. That lecture was a bit of shock. I think that in the end I understood around 50-70% what the professor said:) Najaa, I actually expected that. Well, still it was a shock. However, now after two weeks that first shock is already quite much behind. Now I know that I won’t understand everything (depending from lecture 50-90%). There are always a lot of words which I don’t know. Luckily they are often in management quite similar to the English ones so it’s easy to guess what they mean. Golden rules: Don’t stress! If you don’t understand, guess! If you still don’t understand, look so that you would understand everything or the professor might ask something from you;)

I think that the course offer in TU is all in all very good. There would be so many interesting courses that I would like to take. So I have needed to try to find the most interesting ones. That has actually been quite difficult as the course descriptions are often quite bad (if there even is one). Therefore I have at the moment still around 30 hours of lectures a week and 13 courses. I think I need to drop the hours to 25 at max and courses to ten. I also want to have some free time:)

The courses I have at the moment (if they tell something to someone)
Marktorientiertes Technologiemanagement
Strategische Unternehmensführung
Management Internationaler Industrieanlagenprojekte
Center für Wandel- und Wissensmanagement
Management of Innovation I - The Innovation Process
Management of Innovation II - The Innovation Actors
Management of Innovation II - Übung
Innovationsökonomie I Vorlesung und übung
Projektmanagement Vorlesung
Deutsch als Fremdsprache Mittelstufe 2.1
Spanisch Anfänger ohne Vorkenntnisse

So those are the courses I will have till the end of this semester (end of February). Summer semester I will then need to choose new courses. Basically I have now chosen courses from the areas of Strategic Management, Management of Innovations and Technology and Project Management. Next to management courses I have also the German course and beginner’s course of Spanish. Yep, I want to learn Spanish! Two of those courses are in English and the rest are in German. Together I have at the moment 27 SWS (=Semesterwochenstunden = Semester week hours). That means around 40 credit points -> too much! Najaa, I’ll still drop some later…

Next to that TU is offering a lot of interesting courses, the lectures here seem to often be also quite remarkable persons. E.g. one professor who is offering the international project management course has himself been leading industrial projects all over the World for years…

Next to studies I thought to start also some new hobbies here in Berlin. The sport and free time activity offers here in TU and in Berlin are HUGE! There are literally existing a group or club for everything… Just TU has a sport course catalogue of 80 pages! So I thought to start/continue to do once a week: kickboxing, Disco-Fox and Uni-hoc (in Finnish Salibandy). Next to those I will try to go running at least once a week in order to keep up my running condition. So I will have sport activities at least 4 evenings a week. I think that’s enough:) Kickboxing I had done already earlier (when I was in Grammar school) so I’m attending here a advanced course. Disco-Fox is a pair dance, danced with disco music and that I have started to dance here. Some Finnish people might know the Finnish disco dance education video. Well, disco-Fox looks a bit similar:) Uni-hoc is actually not very popular game here. Whereas in my university in Tampere I think there are 50 Uni-hoc teams or playing turns, here is only one (for 30000 students!) There was last week some 30 people… So not so popular as in Finland:) Actually quite nice to be one of the best players;)

AIESECwise I haven’t been so active. I have given a Finnish culture presentation with two other Finns, I was attending part to one lecture strike and next week I’ll presenting Finland in global village for new members… A first bigger thing I’ll do here is that I’ll go 6-13.11 to a national conference (NALDS). That should be one of the best in Germany! The main themes there are self-discovery and leadership. There should be a lot of time to think about ones own future. That’s really good for me as my future is quite unclear at the moment… I don’t really know what to do after this year in Berlin. I have a lot of ideas. Might be that I finish my degree here in Berlin, might be that I apply to the MC in Finland, might be that I continue my studies in Tampere and apply for LCP there… I don’t really know… Maybe after NALDS I’ll know some more…

I think that exchange study year is a good self-growing experience. I think so because one needs to get out of his/her own comfortable zone and face new things. It’s also good while during exchange study year one has normally a bit more time. A bit more time to party, to start new hobbies, to meet new people, to travel, to think about oneself… And all those things together can make it a real life-changing experience. But it depends from oneself. I think that this year in Berlin will be life-changing for me… I think that I will change a lot here… So friends, watch out! You might not know me anymore when I come back:)