Hey everybody!
This is my first blog post as an international student ambassador and the first time I write a blog in general. Since you have probably no idea who I am I would like to introduce myself first before I will share my past experience with you. My name is Marcel and I am a first year Master of Finance student from Germany. I live in Finland since August 2017 and I really enjoy my time here!
During the last half a year at Hanken I had the opportunity to meet a lot of great and interesting people from all over the world. I met them during classes, group work, and other student activities. I am confident that the contacts and friends I made will last even when I am done with my studies. Besides the people at Hanken, the courses are very interesting too. In my first semester, I had the opportunity to learn what are the expectations when you write a thesis in finance at Hanken, and what kind of ways exist for conducting empirical research in finance. In another course, it was possible to be part of a two-day case study event together with PwC. During these two days, I and my group mates had to face a real life valuation case and present and defend it in front of professionals from PwC. This was perfect to test the studied theories in a real-life scenario.
A further highlight at the end of 2017 was the visit of SLUSH. SLUSH is one of the biggest start-ups events with over 20 000 attendees, 2600 startups and 1500 investors from all over the world. It was impressive to see how big and flourishing the start-up scene is here in Helsinki. An added plus was also the after show party of the event. It was a lot of fun and one of the biggest parties I have been. The current semester is going on at the moment. The semesters here in Hanken are separated into periods with new courses and exams every period. In fact, the first period of the second semester of my first year just ended. This means half time for my second semester!
I just finished the last of my three exams for this period. It was rather stressful to have three exams on three consecutive days and I spent long days in the library, but I was never alone there. Thus, there was always time for a coffee and some fun together my friends and fellow students.
Since I just finished my last exam for this period, I will now say goodbye. I will directly go to the airport to pick up one of my friends from Germany. In the next days, I will show him Helsinki, the Finnish Sauna tradition, and a day trip to Tallinn is also planned. Apart from that, I will try to relax a bit before everything starts again next week.
Marcel