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Created on March 9, 2024
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Transcript
My Erasmus in LAppeenranta, Finland
You are here
- 5.5 millions people live in Finland, most of them in the South
- The official tongues are Finnish and Swedish
- Finns have a really introverted culture except during activities
Some basic facts
Meeting people
You can assume that most Finns won't talk to you if you have nothing to do with them. Activities are a good way to connect with people for this reason, wether it be sports or games.But to meet new people, Saunas are the place to be. Sauna culture is really important to Finns and in there commmunication is free and easy. Taking myelf as an example I had real conversations with a maximum of 5 Finns outside saunas. Inside I couldn't really count them if I wanted to.
My experience in communicating evaluating and scheduling pretty much reflect the graph. For the leadership and decision making, I think the academic context altered my perception a bit. Still the hierarchy did feel loose. While the decision making was as top down as in France, if I felt that the decision wasn't the best I sometimes didn't care. And then if the result were there the consedquences were a slap of the wrist at worst would it be for groupwork or other assignments.
Interculturality I
Linked to my previous point, Finnish professors (and the few students I worked with) just trust you not to mess up and, as long as you deliver, all is well. I find myself disagreeing with the disagreement part. All the finns I worked with were pretty vocal in their disagreement and would fight for their point succinctly but vehemently.The arguments they used however were indeed pretty down to earth which was an interesting change compared to the debates in France.
Interculturality II
As mentioned before, I didn't talk that much to Finnish people. I mostly stayed with other Erasmus, though I stayed mostly with Germans, Czechs and some Frenchs. As friends, we had mostly the same humour as in France, just students fooling around and having fun. Germans tend to have a somewhat dryer humour in general and Czechs are prone to alcoholism jokes but I had no real difficulty to fit in. What was hard was to become quick enough on the uptake to be funny, to have the right timing and not be too late because I was thinking how to formulate the jokes. Aside from that I learned tidbits about German, Czech, Finnish, Russian and even Uzbek culture through the many, many discussions I had. But the most important one was how to appeal and talk to people I knew nothing about.
Interculturality III : What did I learn ?
LUTUniversity
Choosing your degree and classes
Academia in LUT
First you choose everything that fit your degree and that you may find interestingAfter the begining of classes you drop out of what you don't like or can't attend for various reasonFailed and droped classes do not show up in your Transcript of Records, you have to pass a minimum of credits (ranging 12 to 20) to pass the semester, you validate your degree when you have enough credits.
Courses that I attended were mostly : - A few hours of (non mandatory) class (from 0 to 6 H/week)- Project work in groups or not (the biggest amout of work)- Sometimes an examAnd from what I heard from my friend they were the same. LUT focus a lot on doing instead of listening. My heaviest week had 15hours of class and I still was working for 30 credits
Course content
Academia in LUT
Most courses are in english, Lut is really international, I met people from Taiwan to Uzbekistan. Some of course are only available in finnish.
- Each "sector" of study has a guild and overalls
- ESN is one of these guilds
- The ESN form small groups of less than 10 students called tutoring groups who then undergo intake together
- Students communicate on signal and events ranging from parties to trekking but always involving beer are organised every week.
Student life
AFTER
- TOEIC 985
- I got better at understanding Indian and SEA accents
- I feel more confident in my ability to be quick and witty in conversation
BEFORE
- TOEIC 985
- I felt like I could understand anything.
- Without preparation I could convey my points somewhat accurately
My english level