On my first year, we had a dissertation for History of Communication and it was due the last semestre, around November 15th. I know that between October and November I went to the hospital with a throat infection, having to take antibiotics. I was better for a week and then bad again. We had to deliver in the first class on a Monday, so I spent an entire week writing it and I finished the editing process around 8pm on a Sunday, it was almost 90 pages. I sent to my friend and she took to the 24hour press so we could had it printed by Monday morning. It was almost 200 reais for that.
Also in my first year, we had a video presentation for Portuguese that was half our grade. We wanted to show how The Great Gatsby was related to greek tragedy. I studied in a few books and we did a script. But when we edited, we didn’t realize the audios weren’t synchronized and nobody had a Macbook to straighten. I don’t know how we did it, but we presented and by the end, the professor announced it would only be 30% of the grade.
Natália Tomé, Junior in Journalism
We had the most crazy experience with our Compared Communication Project. We supposed to follow someone for a day and describe their routine, it could in video, audio or written. We decided to do a video, because we thought it could capture better the person, but none of us knew how to edit nicely. One day before the project was due, I was finishing editing in my computer and suddenly, it shut down and I lost everything. The next day, we told the teacher and he gave a couple of hours to deliver the project, or we would get a 0. We posted on a facebook group with someone could help us edit and a guy majoring in Radio, Tv and Internet helped us. He was super nice and edited much faster than I ever would. But so you can save, it takes a lifetime and the computer we were using was low in battery. We posted again on a facebook group if anyone had a charger and a friend of ours had, but he has in the other side of the avenue, near Conjunto Nacional. Alexandre run to get the charger and came back in time to finish, save and deliver the video to our teacher. It was very nerve-racking and overwhelming when it happened, but we eventually got a 10 on it.
Carolina Moraes and Alexandre Gonçalves, Sophomore in Journalism
I had three difficult experiences with work and Finals. The first was last year in March, I started working in an agency and it was my first Finals in college, so I didn’t know how rigorous the professors were and how much effort I had to put in every test. I had to get very organized so I could make it through.
The second one was on September, when I started working at CIP (Centro Interdisciplinar de Pesquisa). I changed my schedule, so I worked at night and I had to adapt to a different routine. Even my family had a hard time adapting to it. It was very important having good friends and project partners in this case, because I could count on them to help me finish some papers.
The last one was this past September, I started working at Events with press release and photography. It was pretty insane, because I didn’t have time to study and did a lot of tests without studying, or if I did, it was very little and usually on my way to college.
My tip is staying organized, setting priorities, writing down in a planner and try to eliminate earlier what you can.
Beatriz Vecchi, Sophomore in Radio, TV and Internet