I’ve been sitting in the video editing room at our Institute for the last 1.5 hours to capture and digitalize the material from our recording session on sunday. By now, I’m sick of it… I’m experiencing frustration because of the recorded material, my stomache aches due to intensive feelings of hunger, and after all the idea to sit alone in the editing room creates an intensive feeling of utter boredom. Why is life so mean? ;)

We’ve been talking earlier in our group for the Regional Development – Election 2005 course about the weekly workload for the project, and since I remember the workload from the last term in respect to the Disney Project, I thought our lector James might like to know how much time we spend on the Election Project. Here’s our schedule as a small history since last week’s class:

Thursday: 1-2 hours article research and a little bit publishing

Friday: 2 hours preparation for the weekly assignment, mostly reading and researching

Saturday: 2 hours researching and writing for sunday’s article update

Sunday: 3-4 hours for recording our video material

Monday: 2-4 hours for the weekly assignment in the evening hours (50% research, 20% debate and 30% writing)

Tuesday: 1-2 hours researching for news, articles, etc.

Wednesday: 2 hours before class debate and preparation or latest updates

Thursday: tomorrow we plan to cut our video material which might last 4-5 hours in Munketoft – it will include a) a „news magazine interview“ and preparation for the suggested b) election tv advertisement

Furthermore, we have established some contact to native Filipinos. At first, probably each week, Katharina is contacting other students via the internet on a regular base; and about three weeks ago we spent one evening talking with a native Filipino face to face. These „real“ contacts give us the opportunity to get some deeper insight than only reading articles.

James asked me simply if we’d 1) enjoy it and if 2) we feel that our future is enriched by this – and that’s what Katharina and I replied – expressing only our thoughts:

1) Not only the fact that we get trained in writing academic work or conducting some „pseudo-journalism“ for the website, we have something useful to do for a course instead of crafting a piece of work with which we cannot identify ourselves.

Basically, for us the idea of working in a group means to have several conflicts as in different opinions, techniques, etc. — in the end, it’s just management of ourselves as „friends AND professionals“. We like to work, but it depends on the quantity and quality of the work – and of course the work has to disburse … with a final mark AND satisfaction of ourselves. This of course is in our case only useful with term-papers or presentations or projects… not with the classic written-2-hour-lasting-tests. While I’m worse there than in project courses (and that keeps frustrating me), Katharina has a better go on them.

2) As mentioned above, we like to increase our knowledge – in either especializing ourselves in different topics, just one key item, or by adapting ideas and using them for the future… that’s perhaps one reason why I for example chose to participate in the variety of your courses. You keep offering us a challenge and knowledge which cannot be found in the other courses – flatness, basic simplicity, tradition and dullness is found in those courses which are considered as majoring subjects (law, economy, psychology, statistics, spanish) or taught by flat-thinking people. While Katharina and I would like to become managers, we’d rather choose to know about people, cultures and languages – and your courses are the only choice except the compulsory stuff from the spanish department.

In this course we clearly get to know how to write academic papers „better as before“, we can play around with our knowledge of websites (I don’t just do it all by myself even if it looked as if), and we are able to use different elements such as our planned videos. And on the other hand, where can we delve into a culture like the Philippines except in project oriented courses? This gives us a clear advantage for the future in business situations and private „encounters“ with other cultures. Both of us established a deeper contact to some spanish speaking teachers like Rafael Tito and William Taranzona instead of accepting them as „far away people“ – but that happened only because of our … let’s say… cultural openness. While I primarily lived in Germany, Katharina experienced the French, the Americans and Portuguese in exchange programs or employment overseas – basically, we don’t plan to live in Germany in the future – that’s perhaps another reason why we like such things – including the idea of working more than being copycats.

Which result do you get if you have separate responsibilities in the University’s institute? There is a central website from the institute which informs each student about any course cancelations. In addition each professorship has its own website to give access to the course related materials – and sometimes these website contain small inputs about the courses… like this morning! Back at home, Kat and I found the information hidden deeply within the Occupational- and Organisational Psychology course website – it was cancelled without prior notice. Since about only 15 of approximately 150 people usually attend the course, it was quite difficult to determine if the lesson would take place or not.

Current Mood: Relaxed – finally!
Currently Listening: King of Queens in the TV

Time to go! Is it time to go? Yes it is. Okay. Now move up! Sure. Will you? Yes. It’s late, we gotta go! Okay. – this can sound like a typical discussion once Kat is under pressure for leaving to university. Well, yes, I’m under pressure too but not that much. I better go because she gave me an evil look….