Hello everyone, welcome back! Today I wanted to talk about my first impressions of the master program I’m studying; Applied Ethology and Animal Biology. I was really excited to start this program since it’s very nice and detailed explained on the LiU website so we all kind of knew what to expect. First of all, you have the introduction days and the very important roll call day, if you don’t show up there you will lose your place in the program. After the introduction days, courses start immediately so you get right into it!

The first course is Applied Ethology, which is an introduction course in ethology to get everyone on the same level. I really enjoyed following this course, it has some practical labs and also seminars and lectures. We examined the behavior of chickens, labs, dogs, rabbits, etc. and presented our data in a seminar. It will go on for four weeks and after that you will have another course before making the exam. In Applied Ethology we had our first visit to Kolmården, the zoo this master program has a collaboration with. You have to arrange your own transport to the zoo, but there’s a bus going and often people in the program have cars which is even better.

Then you move on to the next course called Stress and Animal Welfare. It has a completely different schedule and also differs a bit in setup. For me this was super chill, you never start at 8:00 and the schedule is very relaxed. I really liked the topics, in the course you’ll cover all aspects of stress and animal welfare which is a huge topic these days. We also had seminars in which we discussed about questions, Kolmården days where we looked at the effects on environmental enrichment and of course lectures. We also learned how to work with RStudio and ImageJ to be able to analyze data.

When you finished both the Applied Ethology and Stress and Animal Welfare course you have an exam week with home exams, so I decided to make them in the Netherlands. For both exams we got two days to make them. For me this way of making exams was completely new, in my bachelor we only had “traditional” exams where you sit in a room and you can’t have anything with you. It was really refreshing to have these exams, since the focus is more on really thinking, processing, and integrating the information instead of just memorizing facts.

After the exam week, it’s time to move on to the next course which is called Behavioral Neurobiology. I’m now halfway through this one now and I think it’s a very tough one, it’s not necessarily hard but it’s a lot of group work so you have to put a lot of effort into it. However, all the topics are really interesting and it goes more in depth than the previous courses. Next week we’re going to the zoo for a whole week to do some research on different species – my group and I will focus on lateralized behaviors in chimpanzees. I’m sure you’ll hear about this in a later blog!!

I can say that my first impression of the master is really good! The group is not too big and not too small, both students and teachers are all really nice and helpful and the courses are interesting. It’s cool to walk in the zoo and have lectures there and get some experience with wildlife. I’m really looking forward to choosing a thesis subject and spend an entire year working on it :).

Thank you for reading! // Milou

_____________________________________________________________

Why not continue the conversation with us?

Start with checking out:

Our programmes, the application process, webinars, and our Instagram and Facebook account.

Still left wanting more?

Book an appointment with our recruitment coordinator at infocenter@liu.se.

Pin
Comments are disabled for this post