The Departed.

Having come back from England now both physically and mentally, the latter took a little more time than expected; it is time for one more post on my now so infamous blog. So how does it feel to be back? A question frequently asked and it still remains unanswered, I can’t yet put my finger on the exact description of it all but once I find I will surely post it. Those 5 months in the UK were a great experience and I feel like I grew a lot although I feel like I could have drawn more from it academically.

Before I went to study at the Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College I was told that the school weeks were harsh and long, a 9 to 5, 5 days a week idea. Which is something I don’t despise and think could actually assist in the effectiveness of studies as they give everyone a good structure as a base for their knowledge building. This dream was shattered in the first 2 hours that I attended this school when the weekly schedules were given out, giving me two full days off in the 5 day week and the remaining three days were only 3 – 4 hours. Luckily another 3 hours were added to the week because I seemed to have scored below average on an English proficiency test, I wasn’t allowed to review the test with the teacher which I still think is silly but accepted it as I had come to England to study and maybe through this class my English would become more English instead of the slowly acquired American.

As I was planning to review my classes one by one in this post I guess I’ll just continue with my English For Academic Purposes class as I am already discussing it. The title of the course sounded very promising to me and the fact that they would divide the group of exchange students according to level of English was something that was clearly needed as I met some of the students who hadn’t been as lucky as me to learn as much English before actually coming to England. The disappointing thing is however that the class didn’t really teach me anything about the English language, culture or heritage in retrospect. I had already began regretting to take the class within two or three weeks, as the teacher started talking slower and slower and started to speak with yawning motions probably in the hope it would improve his and possibly even our articulation. Our first assignment was to write an article review about any topic we liked, and then present it in an artsy fartsy way as this English class was originally meant for Art & Design students, but through scheduling problems the Music Management students were dropped in there as well. So I ended up doing a little booklet about the Sex Pistols, how long did it take me to read the 12 page article and write the review? I’m not sure anymore but I think it took me three times as long to figure out how to make the little booklet. Point being is that this assignment taught me more about arts and crafts than English for Academic Purposes, regrettably. Even more disappointing is the fact that I think that the whole semester was like this for this class, what have I learned academically? Not too sure, maybe I’ll remember something as I keep on writing this and then I will surely make mention of it then.

Early Monday mornings were the home of the Music and Entertainment Company Management lectures. Maybe nice to explain, every class was divided up into two parts, the lecture and the seminar. During the lecture the whole group taking the class would sit in a big lecture theater and listen to the teachers talk and take notes, the seminar on its turn would be in smaller groups and try to discuss and apply the theory given during the lecture. Now the first bit of the MECM (Music and Entertainment Company Management) class was focused on Human Resource Management, which should basically be part of any company management class. What I learned in there wasn’t challenging in an academic way but realizing that this was knowledge that would apply to whatever job I would get in the future did keep it interesting. On top of that the realization that the biggest part of the artist management within record companies was nothing more than proper HRM did give me a whole different perspective on the subject. The rest of the MECM class focused on the management process in relation to company analysis and different reasons for different company structures and the importance of the company’s own perspective within the market as a whole. Like I said before, this wasn’t the most challenging class I’ve ever taken but certainly gave a lot of insights into the different parts of particularly the record label’s company structure and company processes.

The Monday afternoon was always something I didn’t look forward to, not because the class Promotional Techniques wasn’t interesting, it was because the lecture and the seminar were glued together and was taught as a whole rather than two separate parts making it a 5 hour straight marketing extravaganza. Luckily the lecturer was a very interesting, well educated and well spoken man that could really grab your attention while he was philosophizing in front of the group, usually he did his best to make it all relevant to the classes but did get lost in his own thoughts sometimes and the normally quick switch backs to the power point presentation made it dreadfully hard to follow at times. The general feeling coming out of the 5 hour session was mostly that of motivation but also the realization that everyone had already forgotten was had gone in there, or what was said exactly, simply because it was too much at once. Admittedly, this was one of my favorite classes because the assignments given were the hardest for me personally. An investigation into the effects of positive and negative word of mouth within the music industry really gave way for the recognition of its powers and although it was tough to really get to the bottom of it, it was nonetheless interesting to try and find signs of it all over the place. The theory that accompanied this class was almost too much to swallow but in retrospect did seem to be carefully picked to show the whole spectrum of the different views on various forms of marketing.

My Wednesday afternoon was always pleasantly filled by the earlier mentioned English for Academic Purposes which I won’t discuss any further and will move on to the next class; Strategic Management of Live Events. Even though this class sounds very exciting the general level of this class was below my expectations, probably mainly due to the fact that this was a third year (final year in England) class and the teacher was overly sympathetic to the students have to write their final thesis, meaning that all of the material wasn’t overly challenging and there weren’t any serious deadlines to be met at all. As I am writing this it has occurred to me that maybe some of the classes failed to my meet my expectations because I was expecting too much, whether or not this is the case I’m not sure, I was hoping for a level that would come to mind when someone talks about studying in England. Only to my advantage though now I guess as I have managed to study in England for several months which hopefully only makes me look smarter or more educated than someone who hasn’t. Nonetheless, this class did raise some interesting issues surrounding event management that hadn’t occurred to be before or weren’t illuminated as clearly in my earlier studies in the Netherlands. Crowd Management and Crowd Safety are two issues for example that shouldn’t be taken lightly but still barely got mentioned in the two and a half years of my studies in the Netherlands, which, I must add, is in general more orientated towards the record industry just as it is the case in England, but since music events are a big part of the study as well it has surprised me on how much we are still missing out.

Now last but not least, Finance for the Creative Industry, one of the better classes in my perspective as nearly all the questions raised in a class as this one have a clearly defined answer. This class gave a clear insight into the different financial statements commonly used within the record industry as well as going into common calculations that one can expect to make on a regular basis when working in the industry. The level of this class was once again below my expectations but it did go through everything clearly and I do feel that I have a better understanding of the financial processes that come with the job as well feeling very confident about my abilities to analyze statements and spot abnormalities. There were two individual assignments for this course which in perception should have been easy for high school kids but due to very low word limits did add a certain level of difficulty as you had to be very clear and precise in your observations, and as you are reading through this it should have become clear that it is very well within my abilities to write a lot about very little, but that aside.

In the end I do feel that I learned a lot of my experience as an exchange student and that the classes that I followed did make me a more valuable asset on the job market later on. A movie once told me that it always good to end something with a quote, if someone else has already said it best, why try and top them when you can use their words. So here’s mine:

Real glory springs from the silent conquest of ourselves.

-Joseph P. Thompson

What it means to you, I don’t know, what it means to me: think about it.

This post was created under the influence of:
Red Hot Chili Peppers’ – Freaky Styley (1985)
NoFX – The War on Errorism (2003)
The Misfits – Famous Monsters (1999)