BasBasBas.com

Tag: study

  • Rush!

    Letter of Acceptance

    I’ve been officially accepted to Yeditepe! Time to sit back and relax, right? Not.

    Last week: 2 final exams. This week: 1 final exam, 1 deadline for a website, some work assignments. So at this point I was already busy. Anyway, I decided to figure out how I would get my ERASMUS grant. I went to the international office and they informed me I should have my forms in before the 15th of July (I would be in Bulgaria/Macedonia from the 25th of June to the 17th of July), including a certificate of enrollment for the NEXT study year. I handed my enrollment in last Friday and was going on holiday this Saturday, so that got me quite stressed.

    “No worries, mate” I told myself. I figured I’d just take care of something that I could take care of immediately. I googled a bit to find out more about the Turkish embassy in Holland and visa. The embassy site was nearly completely in Turkish, but I found a number and called them. After passing through 2 rude receptionists and being connected to a person, I was informed that I should not call her but someone asked and she asked me why I called her. I blamed television and she gave me the number of the Turkish consulate. I called the consulate, had to go through the same annoying type of receptionists and finally got someone who knew anything about what I was asking. Turns out the studentvisum for Turkey is… 446 euros! Awesome. Perfectly reasonable to ask from a student, right?

    More stress.

    Then I did something I should do more often before asking stuff to people who don’t really know the answer either. I used my eyes and applied them to some text. I did some reading. I saw I could get an advance on the Erasmus grant, which meant I could probably use that money to pay for the visum. Also, I got in contact with the central international office of my degree factory (commercial university) and found out my enrollment for this year would be enough.

    Last time I had stress relief like this I decided it would be best not to blog about it. So I won’t.

    Nervewrecking stuff if you’re going on a holiday for a month in just a few days. Anyway, it all seems to be okay now. Still nervous about the visum, since I’d rather not borrow money for it, but we’ll see. Let’s hope the woman was confused and told me the normal or work visum instead of a studentvisum. Not counting on it though. The very worst is that I will have to go visit the consulate which is built in Holland’s pit of doom, Rotterdam. Lord, help me :sad:

    Oh! So I’m going on a holiday this Wednesday. Expect to see many stories and pictures! :cool:

  • Time to get moving!

    Okay, I’ve been procrastinating loooong enough (plus I’ve been ill for a while which really ruined the momentum). It’s time to get this exchange in Istanbul sorted! Firstly, tomorrow I’ll get all the forms fixed so I can deliver them to the partner university in Istanbul, called Yeditepe. This means that I’ve been selecting courses. The courses I plan on following at Yeditepe these fall are:

    • Introduction to Political Science;
    • Democracy in the Global Society;
    • Society, Culture and Communication in the 21st Century;
    • Scope and Social Impact of New Media;
    • Consumer Behaviour;
    • Humanities;
    • Theories of Mass Communication;
    • Corporate Public Relations;
    • Semiotics;
    • Persuasion and Perception.

    Needless to say, I’m very excited! Those that know me well will understand, based just on the list above here and how well it suits me 😉

    Second thing is, the to-do lists are back. Last year they were here as I was preparing for Bulgaria, disturbing my natural laziness, now they’re back. Tomorrow I have an exam, so I better start studying now. I discontinued the ‘Latest Updates’ posts – they’ll now just be placed in the side menu. Besides that, more posts about my life and about going to Turkey: I promise.

    Also, the website is still under construction, but it’s about 80-90% done now 🙂

  • Wannabe

    So I just got a message with a picture from after the final presentations of the last project I did in university together with some German students. We were just chilling out in a presentation hall and I was editing some parts of the report while sitting on stage (without an audience of course). We decided it would be funny to play (and interact) with the beamer…

    BG Wannabe

  • Placement Evaluation!

    Just had a conversation with my academic placement supervisor and it looks like I’ll be getting a very good evaluation for the work placement I did with the Bulgarian National Radio. These are the main things I discussed with him:

    1. what did you learn that you didn’t expect to learn?

    One of the things I really learned was to be flexible. First of all, this was because of working in an institution instead of doing my projects within an academic and theoretical environment. There were a lot of barriers between me and my goals and I had to figure out how to get around that. Another reason why I had to be flexible is because of the organisation being Bulgarian. Meaning that things were often rather rigid and bureaucratic and I had to constantly adapt to the situation and expect to have to adapt and be flexible.

    2. what did you not learn that you had hoped to?

    There was one particular research project I was doing amongst listeners which I would have loved to start sooner, so that I could have executed it on a larger scale and would have learned more about research in the process. I can not go into detail about that on this blog, but planning and looking ahead is the key here!

    3. what would you change about your placement?

    Not much, except I would secure it earlier and prepare more coordination. Have more people who can help me out and secure a part of their time so that they can help me out if it’s necessary. Besides that I would do the research project I mentioned juts now earlier and I would love to do an evaluation of the internal communication of the radio. That is, if there are influential people within the radio who are willing to listen to my findings and are ready to make some changes or do further research based on those results.

    4. what advice would you give to a student going on placement in order to help him/her ave a better experience?

    – Be flexible: expect the best and prepare for the worst!
    – Be proactive: don’t sit around waiting to get tasks handed out to you. Create your own job! This will make things A LOT more interesting for you as well as for your employer.
    – Be valuable: make yourself an asset to the company. Be of value to the company, so that when you leave, the company loses something valuable that they would like to keep or get back. No matter what your plans are, do this! Even if you don’t plan on coming back or are actually planning to never come back; do it!
    – Be original: don’t go and don’t do what everyone else is doing. Pick an original company or organisation for your placement. Pick an original destination. This will make you learn so much more, will make you have so much more fun, will make life so much more interesting for you. Besides that, it will impress your host organisation, your professors, your social environment, as well as potential future employers when they see this on your CV! However, if you are not willing to be flexible and proactive then forget it. Go do what everyone else is doing or you will not make it. If you don’t feel like having to make the best out of situations, but prefer to be passive, then you are not fit for the exceptional.

    I hope this helps you out, whether you’re a student looking for a placement or currently on a placement or just someone interested in career strategy. Make sure to come back for more!

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