05/11/2017

The Dutch Tales #2: Living the library life

As promised last time, the next article will be about universities. Let me start with a bit of a disclaimer by specifying that this article compares only the universities and programs that I personally studied, which is the Czech-taught version of the program International Trade at the University of Economics in Prague and the Msc program Marketing Management at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Yes it's a bit dumb to compare a bachelors to the masters but hey let's just deal with it, okay?

For those of you who haven't heard of Tilburg nor the university before (I feel you, I really do) it's located in a province called North Brabant, roughly 20 minutes away from Eindhoven (now that does ring a bell, doesn't it?!). According to Wikipedia Tilburg is the SIXTH biggest city in the Netherlands - shocking, I know. In case you're really into football (or for my beloved American friends: soccer) you might have heard of Willem II, Tilburg's very own football club that I'm yet to see play live. Everyone says that the city is not nice - for the Dutch matters - but don't believe them! I am deeply in love with Tilburg and I think it's the second most beautiful city in the world (after Prague obvi). But back to the university - personally I think it's simply awesome but to support my claim with some facts, it was recently ranked the 3rd best university in the Netherlands in the Elsevier Beste Studies ranking, woo! (I don't mean to brag, but my program was selected the best of its kind, yay!)


I told you the city is beautiful!


Anyway, compared to studying at VŠE (for those that don't know, that's the shortcut for University of Economics in Prague) where basically everyone sort of handles a part time job and some of the braver ones also being active in a student club while studying full time (I am guilty of that myself ) - studying in Tilburg gets quite full time. Oh, you're done with your group project? Here's more of them. Wait, how about some individual assignments? Actually, let's do some every week. And let's have all the exams within 5 days! Yup, especially the exams schedule is quite a big difference - being used to have my exams spread across a whole month, it became quite difficult for me to juggle studying for three at the same time. Buy hey, I made it (well, hopefully) and so let my reward be... another unit! No break! Yay school!

Speaking of units, this might be new to some of you. As if dividing the academic year into two semesters is not enough, every semester is also divided into two units. You take different classes in each unit that takes 7 weeks, followed by exams. I personally find this system very convenient as it means that you only have 2-3 classes at the same time instead of let's say 6 for the whole semester. Also, remember when I said that we have exams within 5 days directly after the course ends? That also means that in case you manage to pass all your exams in the first try, you have the whole January off! That is a very pleasant change to my past 4 Januaries (aka the bachelor ones) spent in the dorm covered in books with hobo-like hair eating only pizza and instant soup.

Throwback to when we had a doggo running into our lecture, aka sitting in the front rows has finally paid off. Also yes I cut out the professor's head cause I didn't ask for permission to post this haha.


One of my favourite memories of the first unit is the very first lecture of Brand Management - part of the subject was a project in collaboration with a company, including a visit in that company. The professor had no chill (in a good way haha) when he was like: "Oh by the way, if you choose Mondelez, make sure you can get a car cause we're going to Belgium." Going to another country for a group project? Number one on the list of things that would never happen to you while studying in Czech Republic!

By the way - no, I didn't get to go to Belgium, I went "only" to Utrecht. :)

Those of you who follow my instagram stories know that I have been basically living in the library. Putting the question of how productive I actually am aside, the library is THE holy place of the campus. It has about 500 computers and yet it's practically impossible to get one. So if you want to play some SPSS (if you don't understand this joke you are clearly a happy person), you better make your reservation otherwise you might get kicked out - been there, done that.

That sort of brings me to the question that I get a lot: Is studying in the Netherlands more difficult than in Czech Republic?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: First of all, this probably really depends on what you study. I feel like my program is for sure not more difficult than what I studied in Czech Republic, however it is way more time consuming than my bachelors. You have a lot of individual and group assignments and also the exams happen in more of a time pressure. But then again, maybe it's just me being more motivated to have good results - cause paying tuition fees does get quite motivating if you know what I mean. (Yes studying in Czech Republic is for free.)

It's very hard to come up with exciting pictures when you're writing about a library...


Speaking of motivation, I am really trying to be active at the university, so apart from becoming active in this amazing study association called Asset | Marketing (greetings to you guys if you're still reading ) and becoming a member of the sounding board of my program, I am also becoming a student ambassador of the Tilburg School of Economics and Management to encourage more students to go do their masters abroad and particularly at our university because I think it's the best decision I  have ever made and I wish for more people to do the same. What I want to say with this is - if you are considering studying abroad but you have questions or fears, please reach out to me and I will be more than happy to support you through the process!

That's it for today! Big thank you for the overwhelming reactions for the first article, you have no idea how happy you made me! I hope you liked this one too - if you read all the way through here, then (again) thank you and if you have something that you want the next article to be about, then make sure to drop me a message or a comment.

Have a successful week!
Katerina

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