Essay 1 - initial feelings about the course

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It was 10 days since you handed in your essays about your expectations and apprehensions about the course, and your personal relationship to radio. I will write a couple of blog posts where I summarize some aspects of your essays.

1) There is (naturally) a difference between those who have seen one or several presentations of earlier courses and those that haven't. While some comment that the quality of earlier presentations has varied, most have enjoyed the presentations and have looked forward to this course. Here is an extreme case:

"I've been looking forward to this course since I saw the first presentation [during] my first year at KTH. [...] Not only did I find the course enjoyable, but also inspirational. [...] From time to time, those presentations were the ones that kept me going and made me believe that this education was right for me."

2) Some of those who knew less about the course were (at least initially) disappointed to learn that the course would not cover different kinds of media or the whole media landscape, but rather just one specific type of media.

3) Many (but not all) were furthermore disappointed to hear the the theme for this year's course was radio. ("When I first heard about the subject of this year's course I was disappointed". This is fortunately often followed by a "however...") Some express (justified as it has turned out) hope that we will not focus only on traditional broadcast FM radio. The majority of students don't have, or have a very tenuous relationship to radio. Many relationships decreased, or ended with the arrival of Internet music services of different kinds (Napster, Direct Connect, Kazaa etc.). My experience from this course is fortunately that students like a theme better and better as the course progresses and you learn more about the theme. This is expressed in succinct form by a student:

"I'm not sure how much this year's theme, radio, will entrance me (at the moment I'm not very thrilled), but usually the more engrossed you are forced to become in a subject, the more interesting it becomes as you find new angles and viewpoints."

4) Most (even those who were initially disappointed by the theme) manage to find some consolation in different aspects of the course and the theme as it is. Many have mentioned that they look forward to hearing lots of guest lecturers and lots of different perspectives from industry and elsewhere. Some look forward to the project work and the freedom to be able to choose topics for the project phase (some also worry about being in "bad" project groups). Some mention the final presentation and the book as motivators.

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