On the 6th of July, I started a 3 week online summer school titled ‘International Relations and Threats to Global Security’ at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. This is what a standard day looked like:
9am – Wake up
10am – Go through the reading list for the day
12pm – Have an early lunch
1pm – Do the daily short-answer quiz
1.10pm – Start the lecture
3pm – Finish the lecture and tidy up my notes
4pm – Prepare the reading list for tomorrow
4.30pm – Done for the day
On certain days there were additional contact hours, either for chats with the organiser of the summer school or for virtual site visits. These would happen at either 9 or 10am. The days tended to go by quickly, especially if the topic of the day was on something I found particularly interesting. The daily quizzes always made me nervous but they never went too badly.
The only other time I spent on the summer school was working on my group presentation and the final essay. This time wasn’t scheduled but was just organised for when time was available. I struggled a lot with completing the essay but the grade boundaries were much higher than at Southampton (90-100 for an A). I also wasn’t sure how to structure the essay because it was very different to my degree (BA Archaeology). However, overall I enjoyed the time I spent doing the online summer school.
Jordan Common – 2nd Year BA Archaeology