The course is much more work than I expected it to be. In marketing there are seven different drivers of price sensitivity, you need to know how to calculate the demand for price elasticities, what’s the difference of elasticity and inelasticity, and what are the conditions of measurement.

I dedicated today’s entire afternoon to go through all the notes I wrote and watching the additional videos provided on the website. In the end, I made the test exam with the final score of 75% which means a pass.
I also participated in an online workshop on how to make your LinkedIn profile more powerful with some very handy information provided by business professionals from Utrecht University.

I promised myself to dedicate at least one day a week from the self-study weeks to reading a couple of chapters from the Bible. As far as I know, they are two different Testament of the Bible the new and the old one. Today I dedicated a few hours into research which help me to distinguish the new and old Testament we think the bible. Long story short it can be said that the old Testament starts at ‘LUKE’ and the New Testament is a much shorter and easier to read because of the use of more than English well old Testament is focused on original and ancient translation.

They are continuing my reading and studying from the chapter of yesterday which is subdivided into two parts. Today second part was all about fundamentals of pricing and the different techniques that are being used. The chapter explains how to understand Price sensitivity and how to measure price elasticity. 

As the deadline for my report approaches, I will waste no more time. I started my Monday off with continuation on my course, communication strategies, to develop a communication strategy with the help of the 7M’s and how to apply the communication strategy with the mass and targeted media. 

For my Erasmus grant, I also have to finish a second exam provided by the European Commission. The exam is made up of two separate exams of which the first I already did at the beginning of March before I left for Spain. The second is meant to be done but by the end of your internship. 

From the OLS exam, I can conclude that my English has overall improved from B1 to B2, however, it differs in terms of reading writing and vocabulary. 

To understand more the norms and values of some of my grandparents including my granny ‘Krystyna’ I have decided to start reading the Bible. Today I managed to read six Genesis, one Genesis is equivalent to a chapter that could be said. As I get older I’m starting to have more questions about life and the purpose of life, I compare my life to those of previous generations, and that leads to an increase in my curiosity of religion as not all questions are and will be answered. I have always been a very skeptical person on the topic of religion. So starting to read a book like the Bible is a very big step for me.

As I continue reading to Genesis I started to understand my granny and her way of doing. Why religion is so important and even ask my self even more questions related to understanding. As I continue reading I hope some of these questions will be clarified. 

I was very excited yesterday to start working on my course so today I decided to continue my work from yesterday and go on to chapter number two. The second is all about customer-centricity which is also subdivided into parts the limits of product-centric thinking and the opportunities and challenges of product-centric thinking. 

I will confess that there was a lot of reading and I struggle a lot with the material. It helped me a lot to make notes of the material I’ve been watching and reading and highlighting the most important information which could be of importance to my exam.  I am lucky that I woke up pretty early today and decided to work on the course right after breakfast. It was a very tough chapter with a lot of terms that I found of importance for my knowledge. At the end of the chapter, there was a trial test which can you rate your current knowledge my score was 80% meaning a pass. If you score lower than 70% it means you failed the exam.

So today is the first day of my self-study topics. I have always been very interested in the course provided by a reliable source. Therefore, I chose for Coursera who offers courses certified by the University of Pennsylvania that is a part of the Ivy League. 

The name of the course is ‘introduction to marketing’ with a lot of reading. Today I did the reading part of chapter number one, which is called marketing strategy and brand positioning. Most of the information in the first chapter I already gained last year doing marking classes. However, I have to confess it harder and much more specified and then during classes at HU. 

I started my last working day with a phone call with my supervisor. He has asked me if I could briefly write down all the work which has to be followed up in a document which he can forward to my successor who still has to be hired. I do not want to say that I was sad however I least expected a congratulation from Piotr as I mentioned I believe four times last week that it is my birthday on Monday. Since I did not want to force him to congratulate me I kept my mouth shut and hope for the best. 

My supervisor has finally received the draft version from the IT department for the familiarization program. Together with the crisis management team we locked into the program and went through the different steps. There is a lot to improve especially with the interface. Accessing the familiarization program via a MacBook was not possible so I logged in via my sister’s HP laptop. Not to speak about all the grammar errors found that have to be fixed. We have also concluded that logging in is unnecessary and therefore will be removed in the follow-up version as it is very time-consuming to create an account and get through the approval process for which my supervisor is responsible. Instead, the problem will be uploaded online and candidates will receive a link via email from which they can access the program. 

Overall the IT department has done a great job the familiarization program created has met all of the criteria and requirements set by my supervisor and the CMT. I hope that this program will help the company during this time of crisis where everyone is forced to work remotely and that it will be effective as we all expect it to be. 

I am quite satisfied with the work I conducted throughout the past couple of weeks. I hope that it will be handy and will help future employees to get familiar with the companies guidelines, policies and inform everyone about what is expected from them at work. Moreover, I do hope that someone soon will work out on my idea of a confidential counselor and put it into practice.

As my internship journey is coming to an end and my second last day has arrived at my doorstep. I have written my last end week report at the end of the day ending with regards to my supervisor for all the support he provided me with and the knowledge and experience he allowed me to gain. 

Today I was consulting with department managers (marketing, finance, business development, and human resources) about important organizational issues. The purpose of our conversation was not to solve all the different kind of issues the managers approach on a daily basis, but to understand them and take steps to approach a particular issue such as absence without enforcing your own wheel on the employee from a senior perspective. For example, the company has seen that a lot of people showed up late to work in the month of February. I was not employed in the company at that time, however, the person that hired me, for example, could possibly go through some hard time. To sum up, in the end after speaking with the different seniors I draw the conclusion that there is a high need for a confidential counselor within the companies’ range. From my experience, I can tell that a confidential counselor can lead to employee dedication and increase overall employee turnover. As there will be someone in the company who the employee can trust and that person can state the situation to seniors without mentioning the actual issue. Leading employees with support is a highly underestimated topic within the business sector and should therefore not be forgotten but embraced.

Since my internship will be ending Monday I decided to sum the topic op in the conclusion within my end week report to my supervisor. I hope to have some spare time Monday to work on the topic and if not I will make sure to hand it over to someone for in the near future within a report.