WOW. That shit flew by real fast. I willingly put myself through another year of school. And I'm extremely thrilled to say it is officially over. The last two sems of school were not as painful as my fake 'last sem'.
The earlier half of the year I took two level 4000 Marketing mods, Public Speaking & New Media and Mobility. Marketing & New Media mods are my favourite. I find them very interesting and useful. Public Speaking was different because I had to give speeches and I honestly hate public speaking. Could not fathom signing myself up for it willingly also but well I guess 2015 is a year of taking on challenges and trying to step out of my comfort zone to grow as a person. I'm pretty glad I did it. Reflecting back on Year 1 when I had to give presentations and would be DREADING IT. I can't even explain to you how much I hated it. People assume that the more extroverted ones have a less hard time but I don't know, I was really struggling. There were many times I was walking to school and about to have a presentation and wishing I could take a shot of vodka to at least calm my nerves. LOL. Fast forward to Year 4 and things are so much better. I've developed a presentation style I'm comfortable with and I know how to prepare for it. I used to write a script and spend hours rehearsing and memorizing it word for word. But that really isn't the way you should do it. Can't say I've mastered presenting or that I have 0 nerves before a presentation but it's not as horrible and traumatizing an experience as it used to be for me. That's something I'm really proud of as when I was enrolling for university, I knew I had to make a lot of presentations in Business School and it was something that accounted for some resistance towards going to that course. I would much rather go to a more relaxed course where I don't have to make 5-8 presentations a semester. But I figured that's a useful skill to have and it's the kind of 'torture' I have to endure to get better. In Year 1 I told myself that by the end of my university I'd get over this fear of presenting and I did! :) So back to public speaking, it's a whole other realm of presenting. A lot harder when you have to rely mostly on words without much visual aids. But the class was really nice and forgiving, the teacher is an actor (of course) and he is really encouraging and I had my best public speaking bud with me (Hi Nick) which made it alot better and we spent our tutorials giggling at stupid things. So fun. Preparing for these speeches took up a lot of time tho. From writing it to rehearsing, etc.
With regards to my Level 4000 mods, I took Pricing & Marketing Strategy. Pricing was taught by one of my favourite professors in school so I HAD to take that class. Was really glad that I did because I had quite a good time. I sat next to Shu Li on most seminars. He was my classmate for most of Yr 1 and I think he's super funny so we just also talked nonsense most of the seminars, that's always fun. Marketing Strategy was an absolute torture but I had Sharan with me so at least a familiar face to go through the pain together. HHAHAHAH. SHAAA :::( By far one of the worst modules I had to sit through. They built upon Sun Tzi theories and apply them to the marketing world (?!?!?!) and also like Game Theory and other bewildering stuff. My New Media mod was a real treat because webcast lectures plus tutorials every other week. YAAAAAAS. I also really like the Professor. Got the best grades I had ever gotten in my Uni life and finally got As for business modules HAHAHAHAHAHAH. So I finally felt like I had succeeded in my university life (if only for a semester). But finally after six semesters of questioning my intelligence and capabalities - and in essence, myself - I proved to myself I STILL GOT IT. It's sad that I let a bunch of alphabets determine my worth but it gets to me when I put in so much effort and it's still not enough to reflect on my transcript. So yeah if my honours year was for nothing, at the very least I have this takeaway for myself.
In the second semester, I basically took only two modules HAHAHAHAHA. I had cleared an extra mod in Sweden and one from a year ago when I overloaded because I thought I was going to graduate (N.O.) One was a Level 4000 MNO mod and the other is a NM mod. The MNO was Work Life Effects/Work-Life Balance/How to manage stress when you start work Something Something. I legit have no idea. I can't even tell you the module code. I decided to try an MNO module just to be sure it's not a career I wanted to have in the future. I know studying it vs actually working is different but it gives you a sense. And I had only taken one other MNO module and "the module name sounded fun". I seriously don't know why I don't ever learn my lesson. After the fucking Search For Life On Other Planets module trolled me so badly and turned out to be about astro-biology/chemistry and other crazy science shit like that. I still want to take modules based on fun-sounding names. AM I FOR REAL??!?! Anyway the only saving grace of this module is my professor who is Romanian and wakes up at 4am to cycle. Really funny fella. But the content in the modules was excruciatingly painful. It was very slack but only because I did not read the five readings per week assigned. The readings had like studies conducted and hypothesis testing and other statistics and stuff that just was SO SNORES. I could not. My other module was a Social Psychology & New Media. It was really interesting, same flip classroom style teaching and the same Professor as the NM mod in the earlier semester so things sailed by smoothly.
Feels very good to say I'm done with school and that I have a job waiting for me that I'm super excited about and blessed to have. If I was in the same predicament as a year ago I'd be feeling so stressed out. More on that next.
Till next time!
