We often hear some stereotypical sayings about different nationalities and countries connected with their unusual and unique features. Finland is not an exception here, and even Finns themselves willingly joke about sauna and ice-swimming, beer and too calm and introvert lifestyle. However, exactly the latter theme became the main reason for mistaken – from my perspective – stereotypes about Finnish life, and I will try to explain why they are wrong.
The thing is a quiet and slow pace of life in Finland, which is resulted from closeness and harmony with surrounding nature, peculiar understanding of happiness and this special inner “sisu”, is often confused by foreigners with a boring life. But I can assure you, that this is actually an informed choice or just one of many options! And if this lifestyle is close to you, then you will easily find all the wonders of it here, however, if it is not – then your life most probably will look like mine.
Particularly, I genuinely love that every my day differs from the previous one. Firstly, the freedom to shape your schedule starts at Hanken, where you can pick courses from a huge variety. For instance, being a marketing student, I took courses in entrepreneurial creativity, JAVA programming, literature course and service strategy management. Naturally, this flexibility enables you to discover something new in the world and in yourself every day.
Secondly, talking about life beyond studying, the student community in general – not only at Hanken – but in the whole city of Helsinki arranges exciting events all the time. Thus, for instance, you can visit a workshop on personal effectiveness on Monday, participate in a nice morning discussion and degustation in a coffee club on Tuesday, visit a fair of start-ups on Wednesday, play beer-pong at night with international friends on Thursday and have a business meeting with Finnish company’s representatives on Friday (where to find them and why it is useful I will tell in the next blog post).
Finally, you always have an opportunity to organize your own event and start any interesting initiative at Hanken with the help of enthusiastic student fellows. At that, the intensity of your life can be at any point in the scale from calm and routine to crazy and full of surprises – it is completely up to you.
All in all, you see, – for some outside observers, who walk around cold cobbled streets, Finland could seem unfriendly or boring, while now you know that behind these glass and metal doors there is vibrant student life, full of wonderful people, activities and opportunities. So, you are welcome to come here and break your own stereotypes!
Anastasiia Strokova, marketing student
If you have any questions about being a student at Hanken – just reach out to me be email: anastasiia.strokova@student.hanken.fi