This is the blog of Ole Westphal and Elias Braun from Germany. They are currently studying for a Master of Science in Management at Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg, Germany. Ole graduated with the German Bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering and with the American Bachelor degree in International Business. Elias has just successfully finished his Bachelor studies in Aviation Management in Germany.

First trimester!

Finally, we survived the first trimester at the KLU and time past very quickly. It is great to see how fast our group of totally diverse people from all around the world has grown together. Each month, we organized movie nights where we watched movies from different countries together. Furthermore, our French friends had organized a typical "Stammtisch" in a local brewery where everyone had to introduce his or her hometown and bring a typical item from their region. Even we Germans learned a lot about different places from our home country. After all exams were done, we celebrated a Christmas Party at the KLU with karaoke, small gifts for everyone and delicious "Glühwein".

What happened during the first months of the Master in Management program?

Of course, we also studied during our first trimester at the KLU. We had different group works, which we really enjoyed as we had the possibility to work together with different international fellow students on practice-oriented topics. Furthermore, there were also various guest lectures, workshops, excursions and factory tours on a regular basis, where we gained some general insights and concrete ideas about prospective working environments and job opportunities.

Visiting companies

For instance, we had a factory tour to Mont Blanc and guest lecturers from Bayer AG and Beiersdorf. Nevertheless, especially due to various group projects and individual homeworks, time was always a valuable and limited resource for us. We ended up spending some weekends or late evenings together searching for the right solutions to finish everything in time. As we had to work on several projects, we also spent a lot of time together with our fellow students in order to find a common approach for rather complex tasks.

In Trimester I, we had four different lectures:

• Strategy and Organization
• Business Statistics and Econometrics
• Accounting
• Supply Chain Management

At the end of our first trimester, we were already able to select our upcoming courses for the next trimester, which will start in the beginning of January. Additionally, we also received our new schedule and some first information about the required books for our different courses.

All in all, our first trimester was a very good start and we are curiously looking forward to the next one ;)

Ole and Elias

Master in Management 2012-2013
Kuehne Logistics University