First academic week

The weekend I was feeling a little better, but still I was not fully recovered. The night from Saturday on Sunday I couldn’t sleep at all, probably because I had been sleeping too much the days before. The only thing I did was going to the fresher’s fair on Sunday. At the fair all the different student societies and sports clubs present themselves. Also the boxing club was presenting, and I signed up for the season’s first training on Monday night.

Monday was my first lecture, Strategic Management. This course doesn’t seem that hard, however we need to read a lot and do a lot for it, it will take a lot of time. But it seems to be a quite interesting class. At night, after my dinner, I went to the library to get some of the books the lecturer wants us to read. A 900pg book, a 500 pg. book and an 800 pg. book, of course we don’t have to read and do everything in those books.

At 8:30 the boxing class started. The class was not really suiting me, since practically all the boxers were beginners. We only got to learn the stance, how to punch and how to skip the rope… I knew that already. After the training I had a talk with the trainer and he suggested I’d come to his boxing club for the next training, that would be Tuesday. When I came home, I made a start with me homework reading the first pages about strategic management.

Tuesday I had lectures again, starting at 2 PM. Therefore I could spend the morning in the library, working on the homework we have got for Strategic Management. We should make a “learning diary”, containing what we learn, what the implications are, which articles we read etc. etc. The afternoon class is about Methods of Research. The materials actually are a little bit boring, but we didn’t get any homework yet. The class was over around 4, which gave me some time to chat with Koy before I went to the boxing club.

The boxing club wasn’t very far away from the university, about 10 minutes by bicycle if you get it the first time right. Obviously I didn’t get it the first time right, at least, the building itself was quite hard to find. However I still was on time for the start of the practice. After some warming up we started sparring right away, which went quite good. After 3 rounds of 3 minutes sparring, we did some pads work out and then the cooling down. The cooling down was including some heavy exercises for the abs.

Wednesday I got the morning class, starting at 10 AM. This class is about Strategic Finance, but the first lecture was really more about corporate strategies. Wednesday afternoon I got the required books for this course from the library and did some reading in the subject.

Thursday is the busiest day of my week, lectures start at 10 AM with Management of New Product Development. This course is quite nice, considering al l the different aspects of product development and how complicated very simple things actually are. After a 1 hour break, which is just enough to run home and make myself a sandwich or something, in the afternoon we got the introduction to a group project. This project is about penetrating the European market as a Korean auto maker; this project had the potential to become some fun as well.

In the afternoon we had our class in Supply Chain Management. This class is given by a French guy with a French accent from here to… well… let’s say Paris. But the materials are quite interesting and also this course involves a project, which is about the supply chain of oil to the UK. After class I quickly went home to pack my stuff and go to the boxing club. However, when I arrived at the bicycle stall... I found I had a flat front tire . Therefore I took the bus to the boxing club, but unfortunately I took it to the wrong direction and got a tour around town before arriving at the boxing club. Luckily I was not very late (only a few minutes) which allowed me just to join the warming up. After the training, which had a lot of short, intensive exercises, I went back to the Uni jogging.

Friday morning I did my laundry filling up the 7 kg laundry machine, and I got it all stuffed! After doing the laundry and putting my stuff in the tumble dryer, I went with Vikesh to a bicycle repair shop, not too far from here, to get my bike fixed. I’ll pick it up Saturday. For the rest I have been cleaning my room, doing some studying and chatting with Koy on Friday.

Today (Saturday) Koy woke me up at 8:30 with a phone call . After I woke up, I put my sports clothes on to go jogging the 20 story building in which I live from Ground 0 to the 20th. After doing some studying in the morning and having my lunch (a baguette with boiled egg, cheese, meat, salad and tomato!), I went to pick up my bike from the bicycle repair shop. For 6 pounds they had put in a new inner tube.