Diploma Seminar 1 left me with somewhat bittersweet feelings. On the one hand, it gave me the dedicated time I needed to finally work on my portfolio, which I had been postponing for far too long, and it also helped me improve my skills in creating web-based projects. As a result, I managed to create a portfolio I’m quite proud of.

However, a significant drawback for me was that the course took place on Mondays. Since I’m in the combined study program and it was communicated from the beginning that core courses would be held on designated Fridays, I don’t understand why this course was scheduled on a Monday. Working full-time, it’s simply not feasible for me to be out of work for two days a week. As a result, I had to rely on recorded lectures, which caused me to miss out on much of the course’s overall context.

Another negative aspect for me was the requirement to prepare a literature review. While I understand that the purpose of this task was to provide a theoretical foundation for our final thesis, many students’ thesis topics are still quite fluid in the first semester. This makes the review more of a preliminary exercise. Although it helped me evaluate whether the topic I was considering was interesting enough to pursue, the benefits felt somewhat limited, as I had already taken a course on academic writing during my bachelor’s studies. From my perspective, the course output could have taken a different or more flexible form to better reflect students’ varying needs.

On the positive side, I appreciated the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the various specializations offered at KISK, which were presented in detail during the lectures.