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.