Pedagogic Seminars

Thursday March 4th. This day began at 9 with a three-hour pedagogical forum about “corporate health and wellbeing” (in Finnish “työhyvinvointi”). This pedagogical seminar was exceptional because the whole staff, both teachers and office staff, had to attend this same seminar with us students, so Pyynikkisali was quite crowded today. As part of my thesis is about corporate health and wellbeing (työhyvintvointi) I found this topic rather interesting, although very much what was said was common knowledge. In these times of restricted economical means it was good that both the seminar holder as well as teachers and pupils talked and commented on how important it is that leading staff keep their other staff informed about what is going on and what the economical situation is, transparency helps keeping  up the team-spirit in these situations. Also the head of the music department was sitting in the seminar and at times looked slightly tense…

Other self evident things that were talked about was how important it is to greet people at work. There has been research done that when the boss stops saying good morning to you for a while, you most likely are the next one to be sacked. Moreover, if you don’t get a “good morning” from your colleagues, it means you aren’t noticed, and you start to feel unnoticed and unimportant. So such a trivial thing as greeting people in the morning is a surprisingly important factor for a good spirit at work and keeping up the work motivation. Self evident but a good to be reminded about (at least in Finland).

After the seminar I had lunch at the student restaurant (on Pyynikkitie 2 a full lunch (including salad and bread) only costs 1,66 euros if you have a valid student card!) and then headed to the main campus of TAMK, where we had our last pedagogy seminar for this year and where we all students had to have their group presentations. We had prepared a presentation about “the hidden curriculum” together with my classmates Lotta Harju and Anu Mattila. I find it such a interesting (and somewhat depressing) topic, so I want to write more about it in a separate blog post.

After the three-hour lecture I got my regular bag of organic vegetables from Runsaudensarvi. I’m subscribing the vegetable bag, and it comes every second week. I get a huge bag filled with a variety of regularly changing organic vegetables, fruits and salad for only 20 euros! They also sell organic nuts and other things for vegans, and you get a 5% discount of all normal prized things with a student card. After that I went home and made dinner, took a long nap and then headed back to the composition studio.

A peek of the last movement of the orchestrated version of my song cycle Dagbok.
Forgetting a nuance in one voice happens so easily when you have so much going on in the score!

I had to get the score as well as all the parts fixed today of the orchestrated version of Dagbok, as we have again got Pirkanmaa Pinna's conducting course during the weekend and on Sunday a concert where Dagbok will be performed! I thought it would be faster this time, as I already did the parts once and only had to correct them. And I guess I was right in a way… This time I was ready by 4 AM, so about 70 min earlier than last time….  Still, I have been fixing the parts etc for about 18 hours this week! But I think the nap in the afternoon was my saviour, this time I had no problems staying awake at least! And tomorrow I’m going to take a day off! So I’m going to sleep long! Yay!