There we ware, the firs days in our ‘online school’. Due to the coronavirus, all the classes were online.

For the most of use the first year at a new school, new city, new people and for the most of use the first experience with online classes. Really weird to meet your classmates in an online environment.  In the first block we started with the course Coaching. Because there are a lot of things in your first year that you can struggle with, the class was split up into groups of three students. The thoughts of this group where that we had conversations with each other to ask how everyone is doing, inside and outside school. I was in a group with Danielle Buikema and Daniel Patricio. Danielle from the Netherlands and Daniel from the Philippines. In my opinion the buddy conversations where a positive addition to this course. We could ask each other things and help each other when someone was having problems. But not only that, sometimes it was just a mental support.

Below you will find the four conversations that I had with my buddy’s.

Buddy conversation 7 October 2020

General:

Everyone was doing fine, getting used to a new school. The courses are going well so far and we felt happy about the class, everyone helps each other out, especially now with the coronavirus, for example sending links if necessary, sending photos of homework.

We discussed the assignments per subject shortly and took a quick look at some of the assessment forms to get a clearer view of what level we are graded.

Since we just started the school year there were some things unclear. For example, we needed some more information about the Sport & Identity assignment. It had to be more specific, we could not really understand what the teacher expected from us.

Something we found a bit confusing, in the beginning, were the subjects Tina Simak was teaching us. She gave us three of the five subjects, so especially in the beginning, we mixed up those subjects. But now we start to get the hang of it.

Specific for coaching:

We figured out what the portfolio should look like, we saw some examples and saw that there was a lot of choices, considering the theme, draft, chapters, etc. We could use Charissa her portfolio as an example.

During the coaching workshops, we have done the quality game, the personal presentation and we have discussed the outcomes of the quality game.

Looking at the whole buddy concept, we like the concept. The groups were chosen randomly, so we got into a group and we have not had the chance to speak to each other before. So this concept is a new way of getting to know each other as well as possible. Everyone contributes to the conversation and really try to make this a success.

Buddy conversation 6 November 2020

General:

This week we had all of our exams. We were really afraid of the Sport sociology exam because we had the feeling that you could pass this exam if you think logically. We were glad that Tina helped us a lot with the exams, she told us exactly what we needed to learn and that helped us. We never have had an exam before where we needed to learn two whole books. Event management, that book was doable, but Sport sociology was a pain in the ass, but luckily we had Tina and she helped us a lot.

We also discussed our event for Sports event. Next week we needed to hand in the reports and we all were kind of nervous because we never really had done writing such a report. Overall we looked forward to the next block, but we thought it was a shame that Tina would not teach us any classes because we noticed that her classes were the ones that everyone paid attention to and tried to do their best.

Personally, there were no big announcements, only that Danielle would move to Groningen the coming weekend.

Buddy conversation 17 December

The last week before the Christmas break. Everyone looked forward to a new year, with hopefully not so much Covid-19. Due to the Coronavirus, Dan was not able to fly back home to his family, so he would spend his first Christmas in the Netherlands. We all had the feeling that we could use a break, this block we have a lot of assignments and not really exams.

We only have one exam, which is Financial Management, we are all kind of scared for this exam. In this block, we have to write an essay, host a sports class, hand in a report for Organizational Advice, and have a Coaching assignment.

We all had the feeling that with the break we could catch up with some things if we needed to and work already on the coaching assignment, but of course, we are students so we also believed there was a big chance that we did not do anything during the holidays ;).

We found that this block was sometimes a bit weird, In the first block all the classes were coherent and now we have completely different classes. With Sport & Ethics we discuss ethical dilemmas within the sports world and with Financial Management we talk about a balance sheet, cash flow statement, and a breakeven point, so these subjects somehow don’t fit together. But this gives also a clear overview of the subjects because in the first block we sometimes forgot which homework belonged to which subject.

Buddy conversation 6 January 2021

General

We asked each other how we are holding up with the schoolwork and the deadlines coming up.

Danielle:
She had some troubles with Organizational Advice, somehow it did not feel like a project we were working on for a long time now. Sport & Ethics felt sometimes a bit useless, because she feels like that it is not necessary to take eight weeks to create an essay.

Dan:
He has the feeling he can be more progressive sometimes, he just found a parttime job as a delivery guy, so he had to figure out how to fill in his time sufficient.

Kaelin:
She wrote an essay but she did not liked it so she deleted her essay. Coaching was a lot of work. She had a hard time with Financial Management.

We came to the conclusion that we are all have some difficulties this block, which felt as a relief that we are not the only one.

We already spoke about next block, we already heard that we have Sportmarketing as a subject, we will go to the Ardennes and we will train for a triathlon.

Kaelin and Dan also asked about how Danielle is doing now, a couple months after the surgery. She had some complications with the scar, but that is over now.