Summer greeting from Jeanette Hauff

How would you recommend your students to prepare themselves before starting a master's programme at our school?
-First and foremost, my most sincere congratulations for being admitted to our school! A school without students might be some of the loneliest places you can find, so you are indeed eagerly awaited! I’d like to take the opportunity to say a few words about the upcoming semester. Being the experienced students that you are, you’re of course way ahead of the usual “rookie mistakes” – but let me just give you some pieces of good advice that I think will be useful for your first semester at the advanced level.

How would you recommend the students to prepare?
-The first point is well-known. It’s all about the preparations. Take whatever opportunity you can get to prep ahead! We have nine different master programs at the School, spanning from Finance and Economics to Management and Marketing, so preparing would not mean the same for all students. Some programs are also more structured when it comes to preparations, sending read-ahead material to all students admitted, and the advice here is pretty obvious: read it! Not once, not twice, but many times. They took the time to send it to you – well, that tells you something! For those of you not receiving material, this probably has to do with preparations for the program not being clearly focused on one type of skills. Then you have to be clever: look at the first courses on your program and see how their learning outcomes are described in the syllabus. This is a good indication of what you’re supposed to know after having finished the first course – and might hence also serve as an indication of how you might prepare during the summer. This little piece of detective work will both send you in the right direction as regards preparations, and also hopefully give you some peace of mind – you know, that goooood feeling you get when you know you’re on top of things!   

To someone who is a bit nervous, what would you say?
- We know that our students admitted come from a variety of backgrounds. This, we believe, is one of our strengths here at the School: we are convinced that many of you will work in international organizations after having finished your master studies, and that an international and diverse classroom is the absolute best way to prepare your for that. This variety of course means that for some of you, e.g. those of you graduating with a bachelor’s diploma from our School, master studies will be sort similar to your previous studies. For others, your master studies will be completely different from what you’re used to. My advice here is twofold. First, do to take an active part in all the activities aiming to give those of you not familiar with Gothenburg or Sweden, let alone the structure of studies at the School, a good first insight! We hope that we’ll be able to give you the best start possible, no matter how different our system might seem at first glance! Second, and this goes to all of you: step into this new world with an open mind! Chances are that you will experience stuff that you otherwise would not have!

Any advice to our students when they arrive at the School in August? 
-The variety of backgrounds brings me to my third piece of advice. You see, I have a strong conviction that no matter how different your previous studies have been, you have one thing in common: the strive to learn more, and a true interest in the topic you have chosen. This goes a long way! Our idea with an international classroom is that we can all meet in a space created by our scientific interest and a good chunk of hard work (which btw always goes a long way!). My advice here is simply to put in the hours! Count on studies on the advanced level requiring the equivalent of a regular job. And believe me: you’ll never ever get the same chance to dive deep into a topic that you’re interested in so if I were you, I’d go all in.

Any last reminders?
-So finally, I’d like to add a kind reminder. It concerns preparations – but not the kind of preparations we talked about before. This is rather a reminder to take some time to prepare yourself in another way – perhaps by reading a good novel, going to a concert or just lying in the sun for an hour. Chances are that your fall will have none of this – so better fill up your mental account with lots of good, sunny and relaxed memories that you can recall during the November stress…