Beautiful Day in Copenhagen (FINALLY)So this was a big week. I feel like I’ve finally reached that hurdle of stress in the semester, where everything from here on out should be easier and easier. Tuesday I received my midterm back from my Copenhagen History course and was pleasantly surprised (or shocked, might be more appropriate) to find out I’d actually received a perfect score–missed two points, received two bonus. Sure, the class isn’t particularly important for my degrees, but it’s actually pretty interesting content (very architecture and urban design heavy) and I’ve been enjoying it so far. The test was über-difficult though–but it turns out I needn’t have worried!
Also in school-related news, we had our major presentations of our mock political campaigns for my Political Rhetoric course on Thursday evening. Throughout the semester, we’ve been putting together research, strategy and promotional materials (including designing posters, leaflets, flyers and a three-minute campaign introductory video–a very Danish concept) in small groups, for the left-centrist political party Radikale Venstre.
As often happens with group projects, I’ve found myself taking the bulk of the work. However, while I certainly complained a fair bit about the time commitment, I’ve found it’s actually been pretty good experience. I didn’t necessarily learn a great deal of useful campaign knowledge from the project (a couple reasons for this: first, Danish campaigns are very different from American ones, and secondly, I feel like after studying the 2008 election almost obsessively, I’ve learned most of this stuff already), but I did manage to teach myself much of the intricacies of Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Premiere, plus a tad bit of Illustrator. As I’ve written before, all seem to be extremely valuable skills and, to top it all off, I kind of enjoy playing around with them.
Inside of Proposed Campaign LeafletBut the project turned out to be fantastic. The judges–including our professor, a former Danish politician and two other DIS professors–loved our campaign proposal, gave us an “A” and even said that we were “probably the best” presentation they’d seen. Exciting! Anyway, if you’re interested, check out our flyer and other promotional materials via the thumbnail to the left, I’ve put some of our campaign materials on Flickr.
In other news, Lauren is coming to visit Copenhagen tomorrow, which should be a blast! I’m really looking forward to getting to show somebody around the city (haven’t had the opportunity yet, no visitors until now!) and check out some of the more touristy things that even I haven’t had a chance to see yet. I’m basically taking a break from work for the weekend but, as I said before, things are calming down significantly so I’m not quite as concerned about it anymore. I’m conscious of my workload, I always manage to get it done.
With a little luck, we’ll get as beautiful a weekend as we had today! The weather has been complete crap this week up til today, and it just about made up for all we lived through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. See the picture at the top of the post, and the image to the right, as well as the photos I’ve added to this Flickr set to see just how awesome it was today.
Beautiful (But Early) Sunset in Copenhagen
Speaking of workload, the three big projects on my plate from here on out are actually kind of cool. First up I have a short paper for my Copenhagen History course analyzing the urban development of one of the cities I visited during my travel break (yes, yes, I know pictures have yet to materialize–they’re on my computer finally, I’m making progress slowly but surely). I’m considering choosing either Brussels or Dublin, mostly just because they’re cities other people are less likely to pick. I think it’d be interesting analyzing a city other than the usuals like Rome, Paris, London, etc.
Second up I’ve got my marketing group project. We’re putting together an international marketing strategy for a real microbrewery here in Copenhagen, Skands, and then presenting it to the owner of the microbrewery in December. I love my group and I love the project (beer-tasting, conversations with the owner of a microbrewery, learning about the production/sales/marketing process–fascinating!). Finally, my last project will be my advertising portfolio for my International Advertising course. A little bit of a more free-form assignment, I’ll be putting together some sort of report (I may be creative with it and design some kind of digitally-based animation/video/etc. not sure yet) analyzing any sort of advertising in Europe that I choose. As of right now I think I’m going to take sort of a two-pronged approach at looking at environmental advertising, first from the perspective of public transportation and advertising and branding within public transit and train systems, and secondly from the perspective of nonprofits and government-based “green” campaigns. Should be a really interesting project!
Anyway, that’s all for now, but expect more as the semester starts to wrap up!
