Studying and Projects

Finally a new blog post! I know it has been a long time since I last wrote, but I’ve been very busy!

After Easter we had another week without class. This week was dedicated to group projects and our Not-for-Profit project. Once we returned to class in the middle of April, we were told that the second half of the semester would get even busier. I didn’t think it could surpass the first half of the semester but it certainly did. All group projects went into full swing.

I’m currently working on three group projects. One of the projects is the Not-for-Profit project we started after Easter. We are consulting a client who wants to start up an educational venture with the aim to get high school students from a low socio-economic district of Sydney to go to university or obtain post-secondary education. This is quite difficult since there are a lot of inhibitors for this target market, mainly financial and social hindrances. Financial in terms that the parents simply cannot afford to send their children to post-secondary education, and more detrimentally the fact that these students do not have role models or live in broken homes where their role models are those who abuse drugs and alcohol. The client ultimately wants to inspire these children and change their mindset to consider post-secondary education. Our task is to determine the feasibility of his project and create a preliminary business plan.

The other project I’m working on is a business plan for a potential product. Our product pitch has been observed by an investor who gave us feedback and provided insight on how we can continue with the product into the market. Of course this is all hypothetical at the moment, but we are looking into the realistic feasibility of it.

As of tomorrow (Monday), I will have two weeks of class left including two skill seminars. Thereafter, one week to study for final exams and then a week to do the final exams and hand in the essays and projects. As predicted, the semester went very fast, but it’s not over yet and a lot has to be done before that time.

Last week, April 30, was Queen’s Day in Holland. There are about 8 Dutch people in this Master’s program, and well, I also live with two Dutch people, so it was obvious we had to celebrate our national holiday. The Dutch Consulate had organized a party that started quite early and we weren’t sure of the exact location but even two streets away from the building we seen many people dressed in orange so no further direction was needed. The consulate provided us with lots of entertainment and Dutch food. I spent a lot of time near the food table --- cheese, bitterballen, herring, poffertjes etc. There was an after-party arranged by another Dutch individual and thereafter an after-after-party that was quite entertaining.

Friday night our class had another networking event to go to. This event was at a Union Rugby League game and many individuals from big companies were present -- CEO’s, high executives, Alumni from the rugby league. We had a private section in front of the field with private food catering and drinks. It was a great experience. It was also interesting because two weeks ago I went to a League Rugby game which is different from Union League rugby. There was a big difference in terms of spectators and social class. Both games were interesting even though I have no idea what the exact rules are, both are quite rough in terms of physical contact but that is inevitable when players jump on top of each other to form a massive heap of people.

If I have some time I will try to add some photos. Enjoy the week!