Summary of my experiences from Finland.

Now that I’m back in Poland and I’m thinking back at the Erasmus trip I’m really glad i went there. Not only I met many new people and learnt new things and new ways of seeing the world as well as education. I believe that since studying is the last part of your life before you have to go to work you should enjoy it. It’s not only exams and hard work it’s also fun. And people should remember about it. Thanks to my trip to Finland I gained many new Friends, some of them on the other side of the planet I also experienced many new things. For example my English went up by a level, especially the speaking. We talked a lot with foreign students, learnt about their cultures as well as their world views. It really changes a person.

The swimming pool.

The University is really well prepared for exchange students. You have a student cafeteria where you can eat decent meals, and cheap too, since usually the scholarship money isn’t that much in Finland. Free swimming pool entrances as well as free to use Gym and other facilities are really nice.

 We rented a room with a projector to watch a movie with other exchange students. The cinema room was spacious and well equipped.

Even though I don’t like clubs much even I went to a few with newly met friends. I would also like to mention that a lot of those fun experiences were thanks to an ex student of our Polish university living in Finland in that city. His name was Sergiusz and not only he showed us around a lot, and gave us lots of hints. He also introduced us to many people, especially Finnish people. If not for him my contacts with other Fins would have been quite poor.

Summarizing the whole trip, I’m extremely glad I went to Finland for Erasmus. I wish I could have stayed there for longer, but I’m seriously thinking about doing my practice in Finland. I believe that living in a foreign country really allows a person to change, and know himself better. Even though it was only four month, those four months are very meaningful to me. I seriously fell in love with Finland, even though it’s a big country with small population (for its size). It’s extremely nice and strong. I learned a lot by interacting with foreign people, be it Finnish or other exchange students. 

The studying at the Kemi-Tornio Unvieristy

I decided to study abroad because i always wanted to visit another country and the Erasmus program gave me a nice opportunity to do it. I decided on Finland mainly because my friend was there before and he was really happy about the exchange. I left Poland at 28 of August. The trip was quite long because I decided to go the cheaper way and took the flight from Gdansk to Turku and then went to Kemi by train. I must really compliment the Finnish railways though, even though I was traviling with the cheapest available class the seats were really comfortable and I even had Wi-Fi access. 

When we arrived in Kemi we had to stay there for two days, because our accommodation in Tornio wasn’t ready yet. We took a few trips around the city and the only problem we had was to find a ATM. Untill the time I learned that they are called Otto there. After that there were no problems. 

After two days in Kemi the accommodation officer Jukka took us to Tornio, we left our bags in the dormitories and we left to the housing office to see what is available for rent. There were only two slots in the dormitories but we managed to get a really nice flat, even closer to the university than the dormitories. We had a three room flat with our own bathroom and kitchen.

The dormitories are marked with the red arrow 

Now some more about studying. I really like how in Finland the semester is split into two smaller terms. Instead of having subjects through the whole semester and then at the end a huge exam week, they are split. So we for example had only 3 subjects for the first two months, and after those two months we had exams, and in the second part of the semester we had completely new subjects. Thanks to that, not only you don’t have as much learning to do, you can focus better on a smaller number of subjects. 

I also really liked how the teaching is done. Instead of having the lectures and exercises separately they are joined. So first part of the lesson is the lecture and immediately after you have exercises. It really helps with the memorization of information and understanding them better. 

The other part I like about Finnish education are the projects, for example: we had a subject where we had to create a website, and instead of just doing some website, we had an actual request from a company, that needed a joined website for the two cities on the border Tornio and Hapranda. So we were doing actual work instead of some made up exercises. 

I also met a lot of foreign people. There were many Russians and Chinese as well as Romanians, Turks, Japanese and many many other countries. There were a lot of trips and meetings organized by the Univesity of Kemi-Tornio. It was really nice because not only we got to integrate with other people they were also free. We had a trip to the Rovaniemi Zoo, as well as the Santa Claus Village just to mention some of them. 

I was a bit skeptical about my time in Finland but with every day I enjoyed it more and more. It was also quite a shock, because even though Poland has pretty chilly winters I saw first snow on the 18th of October. 

I also managed to watch a few auroras and I have to say they are quite the sight to see. I’m very glad I managed to see them it’s really an awesome experience.

Many of my friends asked me which country i chosen. When I told them I’m going to Finland everybody was asking “Finland? Why Finland? I think Portugal or Spain would be better.” Now I will try to point out why I choose Finland

-My friend been in Finland few years ago and he was always speaking highly about everything, local people, other exchange students, university, parties, weather etc.

Weather is really amazing in Finland. This year in Poland  in the middle of December its look like we still have autumn, in Finland there was snow in the middle of October. And the aurora of course J

University was really close to our house (3min on foot compared with 30min with bus in Łomża sounds really nice) teachers are very kind usually you can take a break whenever you want classes are much longer then in Poland but that wasn’t a big problem for me

We also had some amazing events like visiting Santa Claus, trip to zoo, or visiting museum in Rovaniemi. The entire period was fantastic and I hope I can visit Tornio again.

Studying is very important part of young people’s life. So deciding about the place where you will study is first big choice when you finish your high school. Today studying aboard is getting more popular each year. Programs like ERASMUS or TRAVIS allow students from entire world to study in different countries across the world. However studying aboard like everything else has some advantages and disadvantages. One of the biggest benefits is that you can visit foreign for nearly no costs if you compare it to travel agency’s offers. It also help us to learn English on much bigger level. It is also good opportunity to learn a lot about other countries history, culture or traditions. And most importantly you will meet lots of people from entire globe and who knows maybe your future wife or husband is also there. For the disadvantages people in other country can have different behavior or day routine and sometimes it can lead to some misunderstanding. Sadly your friends and family is hundred or thousand kilometers from you so only way to stay in touch with them is cell phone or online communicators like Skype. Still I think studying aboard is amazing life experience and everybody should try it at least for one semester 

1. Studying abroad

How it was on the University? Awesome!

I was a member of BIT class, which means Business Information Technology. I was a part of international group of people from all around the world. I was learning together with Finish, German, Russian guys but also people from China, Japanese, Hungary or England.

In my home university we have for example one subject divided into two: theoretical and practical part. In most cases those lectures takes about four to eight hours per week. I hate it. In my opinion it is a waste of time, but this is only my opinion. I really like the way how is this done in Finland. You have theoretical and practical part combined into one subject. You are going to the classes, teachers describes what you are going to learn, doing some exercises or even homework. The most important part is that you have to learn everything alone at home so you can decide when to practice your new skills or even how you want to learn those information. If you don’t know anything, you need to find answers alone. Thanks to that you are learning even faster, than by sitting whole day in the classrooms like in my country.

Another thing are group projects. You are divided into a groups of three or four people and have to accomplish some tasks. For example: build a web site, create complicated programs or make some assignments. This is an excellent way to meet new people, learn something new form them about their country or language and of course improve your language skills. That is the reason I enjoyed all the subjects I had. See you in the next episode of my “Finland stories”.

Tomasz Pędzich

2. Reflecting your exchange period in Tornio

After my arrival to Finland I was surprised how much this country is different from Poland. People I met the were really friendly and patience when we were trying to communicate with them. Almost every person spoke well in English that’s why we had no problems finding whatever we wanted to. Even in Sweden we could ask anyone in English expecting constructive answer.

Weather was also really nice. After our arrival it was warm enough that we could walk around only in T-shirt and when we were leaving: as cold as in January in Poland, so warm coat was the must have. From our apartment we could get almost everywhere in 5 to 15 minutes and as everywhere I mean: university, cafeteria, gym or even dormitory. We really enjoyed that feature. As we are speaking about apartments there is something I should mention about. Each of us got single person room with separated internet connection. That’s all the IT nerd needs.

University. I can truly say that it was my first school  I enjoyed to attend. Positive atmosphere during classes, teachers that were very helpful when you didn’t understood any part of the lesson. Especially I liked programing because I learned a lot of Java stuff I didn’t know before. Students from another countries were very kind. Communication with them was very instructive experience. I could learn many interesting information about their countries, thanks to that I could compare how education looks in Poland and other countries.

Tomasz Pędzich