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The new semester at Doshisha Business School

2015/10/09 Daniel

I just made it through my first year as an MBA student at Doshisha Business School in one piece. The sultry Japanese summer has finally passed, and the leaves have just started to change colors (Momiji).

The fall semester at Doshisha University has just begun, and 44 new students from 24 different countries have joined the Global Business and Management Program at Doshisha Business School.

So what’s new this semester?

I am now a TA (Teaching Assistant) for the Business Economics class. I’ve also begun working as a contributing writer for Gaijinpot.

During the fall semester, I’m taking the following Global MBA courses:

Human Resource Management in Asia
Strategic Management for Innovation and Change
Investment in Asia
Marketing Research
Making Sense of the Global Economy
Master’s Thesis course 2

I’m also continuing the following Japanese Language courses:

Japanese Written Expression 5
Japanese Spoken Expression 6

Stay tuned for more updates!

同志社ビジネススクールでの新しい学期

私は先月同志社ビジネススクールMBA（ビジネス修士）の学生として、最初の一年を無事に終えました。蒸し暑い日本の夏はついに終わりを迎え、木々たちは紅葉し始めています。

同志社大学での秋学期が始まり、新たに２４カ国から44名の新入生が同志社ビジネススクールのグローバル経営研究専攻修士課程に加わりました。

さて、この学期について言えば、

私はただいま、ビジネス経済のクラスの助手をしています。そして、Gaijinpotというホームページに記事を提供する外国人のうちの一人となりました。

秋学期は、以下のグローバルMBA授業を履修しています：

アジアにおける人的資源管理
イノベーションと変化のための経営戦略
アジアでの投資
マーケティングについての研究
グローバル経営の理解
修士論文コース２

続いて、私は日本語の授業を受けています：

文章表現V
口頭表現VI

次回の更新をお楽しみに！

Doshisha MBA, Learning Japanese

New experiences from the second semester

2015/06/30 Daniel

The second semester at Doshisha Business School is more than halfway through and I want to share my experiences so far. The rainy season has begun with sunshine following buckets of water pouring down. I’m writing up these thoughts sitting at the student lounge on the third floor of the kambaikan building.

During the second semester, I took the following courses in the first quarter:

Business Research Methods; a compulsory elective course (?) which is continuing the Critical Thinking class.
Finance; We chose one listed company (Rakuten in my case) each and analyzed them according to what we learned in class. This excellent class was taking up Finance. Financing, Investing and Pay Out decisions.
E-marketing; We all created projects and promoted them through Social Media and using analyzing tools. Our group made the Tomodachi Crossing real-life meet up group for people in Kyoto. The project was so successful we decided to continue it after the course.
Master thesis course 1; This is the beginning of our Master thesis, where we are finishing our research briefs.

At the second semesters, second quarter I am currently taking the following courses:

Statistics; A class where basic statistics is taught together with statistical tools such as SPSS.
Economics for Sustainable Development; As the name of the course suggests, we are looking at sustainable development through an economics perspective as seeing how it can be used hand in hand.
Global intensive 1; An intensive one week course about Entrepreneurship.
Master thesis course 1 (continuing)

In addition to this I’m continuing taking two new Japanese courses:

Japanese Written Expression 5
Japanese Spoken Expression 6

I was placed on two different levels since my Japanese verbal skills are exceeding my written one. While being a Global MBA student at Doshisha Business School is quite tough, I see learning Japanese as one of the most important artifacts I’ll carry with me after my time here.

同志社ビジネススクールでの第二の学期が今、中盤を越えようとしています。そこで今日、私はこれまでに得た同志社ビジネススクールでの経験を共有したいです。日本は梅雨の季節で、晴れ間からバケツの水が降り注ぐような日もあります。今日は寒梅館というビルの３階にある学生ラウンジに座り、これらの考えを書いています。

第二学期の初めのクオーターで私は次のコースを受講しました：

ビジネス研究の方法：クリティカルシンキングを継続して行う必修選択科目です。
ファイナンス：私たちは（私の場合は楽天）個々で上場企業の中から一つを選び、クラスで学んだ内容に応じて、それらの企業を分析します。この優れたクラスは、金融、資金調達、投資や配当の決定をカバーする内容です。
E-マーケティング：我々はプロジェクトを作成し、ソーシャルメディア、および分析ツールを使用して、そのプロジェクトを促進しました。私のチームはTomodachi Crossingという名のプロジェクトを作成し、実際に京都に暮らす人々のために集まりやイベントを企画しました。プロジェクトは大成功に終わり、私たちはコースの後もこの企画を継続すとことを決めました。
修士論文コース１：これは、修士論文の準備のためのクラスです。

第二学期の第二のクオーターでは以下のコースを受けています：

統計学：基本的な統計学を学び、それと同時にSPSSなどの統計ツールを学ぶクラスです。
持続可能な開発のための経済学：コースの名前が示すように、持続可能な発展を経済学の観点から見て、それがどのように手と手を取り合い使うことが出来るかを学ぶクラスです。
グローバル１集中：起業についての一週間の集中講義です。
修士論文コース１：（継続）

それに加え、私は継続して2つの新しい日本語のコースに参加しています：

日本語文章表現５
日本語口頭表現６

私自身の日本語のスピーキング能力と文章表現能力の差から、私は2つの異なるレベルに配置されました。同志社ビジネススクールでのグローバルMBAの授業でさえ非常に厳しいです。しかし、私は日本にいる間に日本語を習得することが、自分に残すことが出来る道具の一つになると考えるため、この二つのクラスの重要性を感じています。

Doshisha MBA, Education, Kyoto

What am I doing as an MBA student?

2014/12/16 Daniel

Up until now, I’ve mostly written about things that happened outside of Doshisha Business School. This time, I will focus on my school life here in Kyoto, Japan. So far, 2.5 months have passed and I’ve taken 7 courses simultaneously this first quarter (the maximum courseload that you could take), and was quite intense. My program consists of 32 international students from all over the world who have gathered at a building called Kambaikan at Doshisha’s Imadegawa Campus. Here, we spend most of our weekdays attending lectures, working on projects, and sitting in our exclusive business school lounge discussing life in Japan. On evenings and Saturdays, the Japanese MBA students (JMBA) come to the school to attend their lessons and study at the library. Every Saturday, a group of us meet for a language exchange and to share our experiences.

This quarter, I took courses in: Accounting, Business Economics, Operations Management, Strategic Management, and Critical and Analytical Thinking. Additionally, I took two optional courses: written and spoken Japanese, level IV.

The quarter started off nice and slow, but ended in utter mayhem. I overestimated my own abilities, and my 7-course workload in addition to doing other things really stressed me out. I simply had too many things going on at the same time – my MBA studies, kendo practice, interviews for my part-time job, meeting friends and making new ones, exploring Kyoto, etc. I made some strategic decisions and cut out Kendo club for now, as it conflicts with the schedule of my new job at IKEA. One Japanese course also had to go, since I felt that I would learn much more Japanese working at my job (more about that later).

The second quarter started on December 2014. Currently, I’m taking: Marketing, People and Organizations, Business and Society in the Global Context; and continuing with Critical and Analytical Thinking, as well as my Japanese speaking class. Having only five classes instead of seven is working wonders! I’ve also rearranged my priorities to:

Getting an MBA degree
Working at IKEA
Meeting people and exploring

Mari Kondo, who teaches my Strategic Management class, asked us to come up with an idea for a business plan and to implement some of the strategic frameworks that we have learned. My team and I ended up making this silly, but awesome, video. Enjoy!!!

Doshisha MBA, Education, Scholarships

Financing – Scholarships

2014/11/18 Daniel

Living abroad usually isn’t cheap. It can be difficult to go from receiving a fulltime salary to nothing if you aren’t prepared. An MBA degree isn’t for free (at least outside of Sweden). There are many expenses related to moving to Japan, and to make the ends meet, you need to find ways to finance that (whether through loans or working a part time job). In my case, I did it through three channels:

Savings
Student loans
Scholarships

Savings

I spent one year working and put almost 1/2 of my monthly salary into a seperate savings account for this purpose.

Student loans

As a Swedish citizen, I received a student loan from the government at a reasonable interest rate. This loan covers the majority of my current tuition fees and my living expenses.

Scholarships

This is where it gets interesting. Scholarships are a type of aid that is merit or need based. There are many scholarships out there, but they are quite competitive in their selection process. They usually have specific critieria. I’ll briefly go through the scholarhips that I’ve been awarded:

Sweden Japan Foundation. Back in Sweden I attended a scholarship ceremony by the Sweden-Japan Foundation and received some money to finance my expenses in Japan. I got to meet Bo Dankins, the chairman of Business Sweden and Princess Christina. The event was followed by a dinner and “after work” networking.
Doshisha University. 50 % Reduced-Tuition Scholarship. Doshisha reduced my tuition fee by 50% early on!
JASSO scholarship for graduate students. A few weeks ago I got news that I also received this scholarship for 6 months!
Doshisha University Graduate School Scholarship Award for 2014. And a few days ago, another scholarship fell in through the mailbox: the remaining 50% of the tuition fee is now covered as well!

Thus, with advanced planning and good luck, I was able to fund my life in Japan so far! And maybe you can do it too!

[Show slideshow]

Doshisha MBA

First week at Doshisha

2014/10/11 Daniel

I just finished my first week as a graduate student at Doshisha University. A lot has happened and I got many new friends here.

I’ve joined my first student circle, the kendo club kenrenkai(剣練会). Went to a seminar by a Google manager. I had courses in Accounting, Critical and Analytical Thinking, Business Economics and Strategic Management. They have many fancy names but seems basic so far. Exactly one week ago we were welcomed by the president and the deans of the school. There were speeches, songs, and prayers. Yes, Doshisha is a school-based upon Christian principles. But more about that later. Here are some pictures!

Daniel Jacobson