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