ça y est! It’s certain now that I will have a lot of work for the next semester! The teacher even said: “We expect from you 28 hours of work for each credit. So 28 x 30 (etcs) = 840 hours of work, for 21 weeks. Which means you are expected to work…8 hours per day. So it’s like if the government or your parents employed you for a full time job, and you will have all the evenings and weekends for you! Doesn’t it sound good?”  And yeah, to be honest, by that moment, I just wanted to scream out “But French people just work 7 hours per day!!!!” 

In addition, we are required to be present for almost all the classes. We will have several assignments and exams for every credit. For each class, we have about two books to read. All the criteria, requirements are described in the very detail on Black board. The teachers even notice the length, the size and font that we have to use for each assignments!

Furthermore, because of some computer system error, the minor was overbooked. By the end, we ended up with 36 students for our class, composed by…30 girls and 6 boys (I miss my ICT boys =(( ). 

To summarize my feeling, it’s like “oh, the IUT again!”. 

Okie, time for the complains is over. I think it will take me a while to get to used to this again, especially after the 5 months experiencing Game On! minor. It’s just the same way that I had, in the beginning, to get used to the studying and working style, as well as the atmosphere of Game On! minor. Actually, all the assignments/works being planned and described in detail, people working hard and seriously, high and professional atmosphere and requirements, etc. these are also what I expect and prefer. By the way, I also feel lucky to have experiences with both these study styles.

Thus, here you have my list all the subjects that we have for this minor of Creating an International Event. As the minor has just started, I just can give you a very brief description from what I know:

PRJ1A – Project

Like Blue print of Game On!, this class is the center of the minor, and is about your project, from the Marketing/Communication plan, the Event design to the Realization and the Evaluation of the event. For the first bloc, the class is divided into 6 Project groups. We will work on the Audience profile, the Marketing/PR plan, as well as propose our Design for the Event. By the end of the bloc, we will submit our plans and ideas to our client. One Marketing/Communication plan and one Event Design and Management plan from two best teams will be selected. These two teams, as well as the third best team will form one big team, who will realize THE event while the other students will work on other project/event during the second bloc of the semester.

Okie, let’s be honest that working for the “alternative” event (kind of “Plan B”) will be much less exciting, thus I won’t hope myself to be part of the “second” group. But I understand why the teachers have to organize the class like below: 36 people working on the same event won’t be a great idea. Moreover, the competition might give us more motivation for our work. Anyway, for our future work, we will also have to deal with the stress and disappointment of working a lot on a proposal and then being knocked out by the competitors :D.

PRJ1B – Event management

This class is about how manage an event as well as to find ideas for our event thanks to academic knowledge and case studies. We will have quite a lot of lecture and case studies to read for each session and exams to prepare for by the end of each bloc. This is not a big surprise as this time, we don’t have a “teacher” but a real “professor”.

CIE01 – Event organization experts

This class is a little like the Kaleidoscope class of Game On!. Indeed, each week, one expert will come and give us a presentation about his/her professional experience, which is related to our project. However, instead of doing an report by the end of the class about the content of each session like for Kaleidoscope class, we will have to read about the expert and at least an academic article and prepare at least 3 questions before each session. Beside, by group, we will also have to do an interview of some Hanze students who are very used to creating events.

CIE02 – Marketing and PR

As the name might indicate, this class is about Marketing and PR. For this class, for each session, one group will do the presentation about a topic from the field of Marketing and PR. Moreover, another group will have to give feedback on the presentation, and the whole class will discuss on the topic. Beside the presentation that will be marked, we will also have exam for this class.

CIE03- CIE04 – Working in international team

Like the Intercultural class, this class is also about the intercultural theories and sharings . However, I think that we will have a lot more assignments to do and books to read. For instance, one of the three assignments is to make at least 3 international dinners with our group and make a report on our experience and discovery on the others’ cultures. On this assignment, the teacher insists that we have to concentrate on the original culture ritual and habit and not the “student life’s” ones.

CIE 05- CIE09: English

In the first bloc, this class is about how to write a professional report in English, and in the second bloc, we will focus on the speaking skills. Our teacher is a Canadian who has been living in the Netherlands for 10 years.

So, that was the list of all the subjects that I will have for the next semester. You might notice that the codes for them are quite weird, as most of them begin with “CIE” and the other two with “PRJ1”. Well “that’s the Dutch system” – the teacher explained to us.