Forget me not

After my oral exam I had few days of before my graduation day, which was also my very last day in Aalborg. I was very happy when I had found out that Jan is going to visit me and that he will be able to attend my graduation. We had enjoyed very nice 2 days, when I was showing him around. During the weekend I have received mail from school on my private mail saying that they were trying to reach me and ask me if I would be willing to make a speech at the graduation. First I was very scared and I was not sure if I should say yes to the offer, but Jan has convinced me to make the speech. So the evening before the graduation I have spent by trying to came up with something nice, trustful, funny and short. On the day before the graduation my parents arrived to the Aalborg as well. We had planned that we will move me out of the dormitory and drive home in the afternoon after the graduation, because I just wanted to enjoy as much time as possible at home before going to Amsterdam.
On the day of the graduation ceremony we went to the city for hour long walk so I could show the city where I was studying for 2 years to my parents. I think we had a really nice time and that I have showed them at least some of the places in the city.
The graduation started at 13:00 with the speech of one of our teacher and then me and another student from multimedia had our speeches. I was very nervous, but I think it went ok and people were laughing on my jokes so maybe it was not that boring speech. Then the head of the international affairs had his speech and then we were presented to the UCN Technology Awards. To my surprise me and the other student, who had a speech previously, were the two who had been awarded with this award. Grumpy and one more guy from multimedia were awarded with social award and they have received some kind of scholarship or money. And that was all from the graduation and then we were free to enjoy the food, which was prepared for us.

I haven't been posting any article for a while mainly because I had busy end of school year -finishing my final project and then I was in Amsterdam for a whole summer working at the hotel.

So after I came back from Amsterdam, where I had my internship at awesome full service digital design agency called Tam Tam, I started to work on my final project. The final project had to be done in co-operation with some existing company. I was very pleased that I could do my final project in co-operation with Tam Tam. I was creating a concept and a design of printed Tam Tam magazine, which is supposed to be placed on coffee tables at Tam Tam offices. The purpose of the magazine is to give people, who are coming to Tam Tam for a meeting, a chance to get to know Tam Tam better. These people would be mainly clients, but also people coming for job interview or students.

From the time where we got back our approved problem formulation we had a month to finish this project. We had to deliver the product and write synopsis about the project. During this period we haveń t had any lectures, we had just several guidances with our assigned supervisor and than also one cross disciplinary guidance with different professor. So no one was really checking us how far in the process we are, we were the ones responsible for making project plan and sticking to the dates we had defined in order to finish and hand in the project on time. There were some day when it was hard to force myself to do something and be creative. Therefore we also had a sparing group which was not necessary a mandatory thing, but I had a friends with whom I could discuss my project ask them about feedback and we also help each other with theories and making analysis of the friends designs using some of the methods we have learned at school.

When we hand in our project digitally via wiseflow, we had about a week to prepare for our oral presentation and also to prepare our physical products. Luckily I choose to order a prints of my magazine by using blurb.com services, so I haven't had to spend endless our at UCN's printing room. This was a very good idea, because I didn't have to stress about being in the printing room with many other students and dealing with print problems.

In the beginning of the project it was weird to be back at school working on a project, because we had spent the whole semester out working at our internship company, so in the beginning it was hard to adjust again to all the academic requirements and remember all the methods and theories we were supposed to mention in our written paper. We also haven't been presenting a project in front of the teachers for a while, so it was very challenging and also bit stressful to make and oral presentation in front of the professors again. We were supposed to talk for 30 minutes about our project, which seemed to be very hard in the begging, mainly because I tend to sum things up and talk very quickly. Therefore I have prepared a presentation with lots of slides ...no they were not full of text, they were consisting of pictures, graphs, icons and notes, just to help me navigate and remember all the things I wanted to and needed to say during my presentation.

There were oral presentations scheduled for the whole week, my turn was on Tuesday right before lunch time. Presentations were private so there was just me, my supervisor and external examinator presented. I was really relieved to find out that I was able to speak coherently about my project for the whole 30 minutes. Both my professor and the external examinator were very pleased with my whole project and the presentation. I got a very nice feedback from them. The external examinator who has been working within the design field for many years in Aalborg kept asking me whether all of it was my idea or whether the company intervened a lot (no they didn't I had completely free hands). He even said about the design of some pages that it is very advanced design and that I have a good feeling for aesthetics, which was very nice to hear.

Then they send me out to so they could have a discussion about my grade and when they ask me to come back they told me that I have been given 12, which is the highest possible mark. I was very happy to hear such a good news.