Week 1. 03/01/11-09/01/11

Personal and Cultural

I expected it to be cold when I arrived, but I was shocked by the temperature after arriving in Helsinki -17^oC.  I didn’t expect to meet another exchange student on my flight.  My only expectation of the Finnish people was that they drive well in bad whether conditions (from the success as Rally drivers) and they would drink, a lot.  However after a lecture on Finnish society and culture, I’m even more curious.  Most of the people I have met haven’t been Finnish so I still don’t know if the stereotypes are true.  The Finnish people are very friendly and helpful and they would go out of their way to help.  Nearly all the Finns speak English as well as Swedish.  The only problem with the language is that my English is much lazier and so I have started to slow down my speech and to take out my slang and regional phrases and words.

I wasn’t sure how I might cope with being outside my comfort zone but to be honest there has been so much to take in and to do that I haven’t had time to think about what I was doing I was just doing it, with the help of my Erasmus tutor of course.  There is so much that I have needed to do, so I would do it and somehow find time to revise for my exams. 

The price of food and a bus ticket seems to be extortionate however once I got a student bus card it made travelling around the city and to the university less of a strain on my bank account. 

Professional

Having had no classes yet only orientation lectures I can already see that punctuality is very important (the students studying in the Faculty of Education have been told to be on time for our school visit, not even a few minutes late) and that all the lecturers are very friendly and easy to approach.  After visiting the library I found it confusing as to why you need to request books online, but it is because they keep their books underground.  It’s strange that a university library would not present their books for their students to browse.  One of my favourite things about the University of Turku is that it’s free to print (unless you print silly amounts of pages), must be all the trees.  The strangest educational system I have discovered is in Russia.  One of the exchange students is from Russia, studying telecommunications, and is in the third year of his studies and is only 18!!!  It seems that if you are good enough at your subject (in this case mathematics and ICT) you can choose to spend half as long in high school and go to university at a younger age.  Everyone was shocked when we heard this.

 

Education even at degree level is free in Finland as the strong Students’ Unions have been successful in fighting against proposed tuition fees, after taking to my tutor I found out that the government pays students to study, clearly education is highly valued tin Finland.  It seems strange to be moving from one part of the world where thousands of students are demonstrating against a further increase to one where the government can’t implement any fees.  However the structure and course organization of the university will be seen soon and commented upon in later weeks.

Photographs (top): The Lutheran Cathedral, Finland's oldest building.

(bottom): This car won't be going anywhere for a long time.