#qa programme

In less than two months, the QA Programme will venture to a remote location on one of our epic Cabin Trips. To help you picture what you can expect from one of these trips, we have compiled a few experiences from last semester’s Cabin Trip for you. The first comes from mentee Lottie, who has maybe made the most aweome contribution in QA blog history - a prophecy-in-rhyme for the Movie Mash-Up.

Throwing a random group of people together is always an interesting social project. Dividing this random group in even more random groups and having them compete is even more so. Right before I left for the Cabin Trip, I saw a picture on Facebook, that I believe stated that 15 minutes of playing gets people to bond more than a long and deep conversation. And as much as I enjoy good conversations, I think The Internet has a good point there.

Admittedly, I was quite reserved at the start of the weekend. I didn’t know any of my teammates, and stubbornly wanted to just hang out with the people I had already met. Soon enough, however, I realised that feelings like these are often just products of misplaced self-consciousness. Not wanting to allow myself to be limited by this, I rapidly chose to let go and stop taking myself so seriously. A good decision that resulted in a great weekend with a lot of fun and silliness.

My team - composed of a Finn, a Japanese, an American, an Italian, a Dutchie and a girl from Hong Kong - soon proved to have a great dynamic, and the more activities we did, the more fun we started to have. Balancing on a tiny mat with a group of six people, or competing in a nightly cucumber race with your newly found arch enemy (you know who I’m talking about, red team) surely leads to hilarious situations, no matter how old you are or where you are from. Besides that, exaggerated fanaticism and animosity were often the basis for funny encounters with members of other teams, while during the nights the cheap bar and highly intellectual 90s and 00s music let us forget about our Hunger Games for a little bit. When you find youself mopping the floor on drum ‘n base at 4am because you don’t feel like going to bed, you know you’ve had a good night.

Lottie and other happy campers.

The crowning moments on every team’s work, and my personal favourite part of the weekend, were definitely the movie mash-up plays on Saturday night. The combination of minds from different backgrounds proved to be a great source of creative genius. Whomever knew that Harry Potter is in reality a Japanese schoolboy with dementor lovers, and whose parents have been eaten by a hungry Cyclops whom he shall defeat according to an ancient prophecy? Or that the great Wizard of Oz is in fact a heartless serial killer with a cocaine addiction? Moreover, the way in which everyone put themselves out there, showed that the group had grown quite comfortable with each other over the course of less than two days.

Lottie wrote a phrophecy-in-rhyme the above Movie Mash-Up story. It’s pretty amazing. Take a look:

I see your parents have tragically died Their killer survived and ran off to hide As it is only one, who can truly live free A journey to Greece is what I foresee.   Your destined goal is yet still far But along the way you’ll be told what you are Trials shall be met, and your fears you shall face So develop the skills in the right place.   Olympus School is where this is done best They will prepare you for your dangerous quest Fear not, though, rest your mind In the end, you shall be “the boy who survived”.

I think it is great to know that university students from all over the world still allow themselves to be silly and let go at times, and that doing so creates more common ground than one would initially think. It is things like this that will keep me going when I’m spending sunny days in the KUA library, struggling my way through Descartes and Hegel.

Sounds like fun, right? Sign-up for the next Cabin Trip is open - sign up now at www.qaprogramme.dk/event/qa-cabin-trip-autumn-2015

Mathieu has been a board member since October 2013. He is a part of the administration work group as well as the Language Exchange Platform. He is also one of the people who made our Language Tandem Programme so successful. Here is what 'QA' means to him.

Mathieu

  I jumped on board the QA train just over a year ago, when the program was still young – and it still is today. I wasn’t planning on running for a board membership, not even remotely considering it, but looking back at all the activities I could be part of and the friends I had met thanks to QA people, it was as if I just had to raise my hand at the fall general assembly of 2013. If it is true that the Q in QA stands for “questions”, to me it rather Means “quest”. I was looking for a new, more participative experience and an occasion to actually do something that had a direct and concrete impact on other people’s lives. I had come to Copenhagen to complete a research-oriented master’s degree which I knew would take me down a path of reading, writing, thinking and questioning others (and myself) on highly theoretical issues. Don’t take me wrong: I don’t regret the choice I made academically, but being a QA mentee made me unconsciously realize that I wanted to do something more, and give back to the community I had just joined.

  The last welcome dinner - we took over the canteen

  Since becoming a board member, I have had the chance to try my hand at organizing events and administrative tasks, and I have tried my best to ensure that our new members, both mentees and mentors, could make the most of their experience studying at our university. Besides my administrative work, I have been involved in managing the Tandem Language Exchange to help language-curious students, and others, get in touch with like-minded individuals and learn or practice each other’s language in an informal setting. The roles I have assumed brought me both challenges in times of rush when deadlines were approaching fast, and also great satisfaction from the feedback we have received. One of the highlights of my time as a board member probably was being awarded a 10,000DKK price by Academic Books to use to organize events for the Tandem Language Exchange. As the new board period has recently started, I feel lucky to have a new team of board members to work with to create new opportunities for our members.

Spot the Tandem!

  If I must stress only one aspect of what being a board member is to me, I would say that it starts with an A: adventure. Because we are venturing into uncharted territories for most of us, as we are all students, and it is therefore a continued learning experience. It might be a daunting task at times, but it has been very rewarding to me and I cannot wait to see what the rest of the semester has in store for the program.

Hello everybody! Hope you are all enjoying the nice Danish summer!

It is August already, and all of us at the QA team are really excited about the Mentor Workshop that is coming up soon! As part of the preparation, we have had our own ‘training day’. Here is a few lines about what we did.

The day started at 8AM at KUA2, our home turf. Yes, it was early, and we were in desperate need of coffee and breakfast for our stomachs. So, we started off by having a nice, cozy breakfast, catching up on what we have been doing for the summer.

As we were eating some nice loaf of breads with jam and cheese, Anne-Marie, who coordinated this amazing day, and who will be co-coordinating the Mentor Workshop, dumped Lego pieces in front of us. We were all handed individual tasks to do with these Lego pieces. Some of these tasks were like having only white blocks on the 3rd and 4th layer, or to be responsible for making the 6th layer on your own.

Apparently, this was a ‘team-building exercise’ for the QA team. Interesting, right?

The rule was simple: not to tell the others about our individual tasks, and to NOT talk about the Lego construction. We were allowed to talk about anything else, just not about the Lego. We carried on with this for 25 minutes, and to be honest, we were all having question marks above our heads in how this is a ‘team-building exercise’. But we ended up building a pretty impressive crane/bird looking building. After our beautiful masterpiece was created, we all shared what our tasks were, and how we tried to complete our individual tasks. Some of us were keen on keeping their tasks, for example by throwing someone else’s Lego blocks away, and some of us were just having fun, and just started to build whatever that they could do.

This Lego activity was definitely entertaining, and we could sort of see how we work as a group. It was very useful!

After this fun activity, we went on to the guest speakers. We started off by learning about how to do project management, and with the help of Anne Kjølby, we were able to put our projects into a managerial framework.

Next, we learned about the conflicts arising from cultural differences. The guest speaker was Vijay Jain who was very helpful and gave us tips and advices on how to work with a multi-cultural environment. Jain brought a very nice student, Andra Gavrilescu, who with two years experience of living in Denmark, could tell us about her personal experiences adjusting to life in Copenhagen.

Finally, we learned about volunteering from a professional in the field, Maria Baad Holdt from Ingerfair, a consultancy specialized in volunteer work.

All the guest speakers were amazing, and we learned a lot of things. They were all very useful, and we cannot wait to implement all the great ideas into the QA Programme!

By the time we finished all the lectures, it was already 5PM, and we were pretty exhausted. But, Anne-Marie had another fun team-building exercise waiting for us!

Wondering what it was, we all went outside. There, we were given 4 plastic crates. Again, question mark. The rule was this: all members had to move finish a route by NOT touching the ground, and ONLY using the 4 crates.

Now, how to do this? It was a bit of a thinker, but Mette quickly came up with the solution. See how we managed on the pictures below.

This was FUN! After having spent all day together, including team-building exercisers and lectures helping us develop elements of the QA Programme, we think we've improved as a team.

Our training day was wrapped up with this final exercise. It was a long day, but it was definitely educational day, and it gave us some awesome ideas for our upcoming events. We cannot wait to share this with all our Mentors and Mentees, and see how it will take shape!