Michael Dudzik - full review
historian · Faculties of Humanities and Arts, Charles University, Erasmus Mundus
What comes to mind when I hear AMAZON? Above all, a great group of people, a high-quality teaching team and an almost constant stream of new information. I would highlight that because, as someone who enjoys continually discovering unfamiliar things, I really welcome new knowledge, and AMAZON provided it perfectly.
Thanks to the constant practice we were put through as students, I developed the ability to “knuckle down” and keep going until I had reached a satisfactory understanding. Above all, my grammar school taught me one thing that it gave me for life: discipline. The many ten-minute quizzes, tests, oral examinations, end-of-term assignments, seminar papers and other joys of student life taught me to sit down and devote time to learning because - as I realised increasingly often after passing my school-leaving examinations twelve years ago - I was doing it for myself, not to please my parents or teachers.
It was already at Amazon that I developed an appreciation of Czech and history, mainly thanks to excellent teachers who were strict but still approachable, always came to lessons very well prepared, and were willing to discuss things and share their subject knowledge. This is Amazon’s greatest asset, the reason it works and why, even after so many years, its students remember their teachers and the various twists and turns that accompanied their secondary-school studies.
The more I embraced the breadth of knowledge offered at grammar school, the easier the transition to university became: I could later impress both my university teachers and my new classmates with it. When I started my bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in 2013, the psychology elective I had chosen at Amazon proved very useful for one of the disciplines taught there, as did my broad general knowledge from secondary school. I specialised in history, which I chose to study at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in 2016. The discipline I had learned meant I could work on several assignments, study for examinations and produce my first major piece of work, my master’s thesis. For that, too, I can thank Amazon and its essay assignments.
In 2019, I decided to deepen the knowledge I had acquired even further and applied for doctoral studies. But life had another challenge in store for me, and a year later I also applied for a two-year Erasmus Mundus programme, during which I lived and studied in France, Portugal and Italy. Thanks to the diligence, perseverance, language teaching by native speakers and, above all, independence I had gained at Amazon, I managed both the languages and life in foreign countries, as well as the demanding examinations for my doctorate. Without discipline and a well-organised schedule, I certainly could not have managed both at once.
Working on my doctoral thesis in 2023-2024 was something of a culmination, when I finally put everything I had learned since my time at Amazon to use. Studying sources that are three hundred years old is not exactly easy, and it was only through perseverance and determination that I managed to collect everything essential. Now all that remains is to bring it together in its final form.
My advice in closing? Make the most of the fact that your teachers want to teach you something. Explore, discover and learn. Take an interest in what is happening around you and work on yourself. Now is the ideal time to start absorbing information and developing useful study habits that you can draw on and follow for the rest of your life. You just need to put in some effort and find the motivation that lies within each of us. You never know what life will bring or where fate will take you - be ready for it.