Rain, chocolate sprinkles and first exams

I know where to find the cheapest and the most delicious cheese on the famous local market. I have also come to terms with the fact that now after quite nice September and October we will probably be hit by sunshine first in spring and that there is simply no point in complaining about the terrible wind and rain, because it just wouldn’t be the Netherlands without terrible weather. It makes me feel weird whenever I need to get somewhere without riding my old and rusty bike and I also already learned that late breakfasts can be divided into two groups – those which you can eat while riding your bike on the way to school and those you can’t. The latter group includes for instance the local speciality – toast with butter covered in decorative chocolate sprinkles. It is a surprisingly tasteful combination, but to be honest, the list of foods the Dutch cuisine can be proud of doesn’t run far beyond this.

My rather archaic bike. Dutch city cycling is egalitarian in terms of gender, so the benefits of riding women's bikes are available to everyone.

The tasting of traditional Dutch meals didn't really impress me.

Aside from absorbing the elements of the Dutch culture, I consider the process of my acclimatisation successful in general. After eight weeks of lectures and tutorials, I wrapped up my first three subjects out of the twelve prescribed for the first year. The first term was devoted to two introductory courses and one series of workshops on academic writing. The workshop was concluded by a final essay, which we were continuously developing in during the entire term, so there were only two written exams to go. The first one was from the Introduction to Human Communication course, which was very much theory-laden and studying for it took up most of my time in the previous weeks. Although after the exam I was convinced I will pass, I wasn’t sure whether it will be with a decent grade. The other course with a written exam was Introduction to Social Science Research, where we were learning how to write a proper research design and how to conduct different types of research itself. I found this course much more easier because we were acquiring the methods by just completing the assignments throughout the course, so there was not much left for learning to feel good about the exam. This evaluation of the courses is not based on the actual results of my exams yet, because we still have to wait for a few weeks for those. So maybe I will change my opinion once I find out how I scored.

Even though much of the content we covered in the first three courses has been already familiar to me, the lectures still helped me to organize my previous knowledge and lay firm ground for the courses coming up in the following terms. They also further sparkled my interest in media and communication and once again assured me that I made a right choice in terms of choosing my field of study. Even though the descriptions of some of the upcoming courses seem to promise many nights spent on remembering different media and communication scholars and their theories, it makes me even more anticipate the practically oriented courses coming up in the years two and three of my bachelor studies.

Fortunately enough, the university already provides us with opportunities to have a taste of how our future careers may look like. In the last week of September, I was able to attend the local version of the annual Social Media Week Rotterdam conference and listen to inspiring presentation by influential speakers from the field of my studies with both academic and business background. I was grateful for this opportunity, because the accreditations for this event were normally sold for few hundreds Euros. I am convinced that the faculty will provide us with many similar opportunities to have a taste of the “real world” in the upcoming months.

From the glamorous world of conferences