Summer courses at Hanken

Time flies, and here we are in a month from summer already, so it’s a good time to reflect on the departed vacation. As Reetuparna mentioned in her post on the internship in Helsinki, students indeed have various activities to choose from during the summertime. Since in my previous university summer courses weren’t a common practice and I did only internships during vacations before, this year I had the first experience of studying in summer. Even though Hanken always had been offering summer classes, this time a curriculum was complemented with numerous additional online courses due to special conditions and closed boarders. Thus, students being in any country could start their thesis in frames of summer Research Seminar, learn a new programming language, deepen knowledge on management.

Besides, Hanken’s summer podcast was launched with researchers’ and professionals’ talks on entrepreneurship, innovativeness and current challenges in life and business, and I liked this format very much! 🤩 It was convenient to listen while drinking coffee or riding a bike since episodes were simultaneously informative and short. You can find something interesting for you here: https://www.hanken.fi/en/news/hankens-summer-podcast-talks-about-economy-life-and-time-around-corona-pandemic .

This summer I decided to combine the internship and several courses, which eventually complemented each other very well, so I still had time to enjoy the hot days and have fun. I was an intern in the Marketing Department in the legal consultancy firm, and this experience appeared to be something really special! I did it partially in the office, and partially remotely. Look what a beautiful terrace we had at Helsinki office!

By the way, at Hanken you can also get from 5 to 10 credits for your internship, depending on its duration. All you need is to write a report on implemented practical tasks and analyze their connection with known theory. As for the summer studies, firstly I took the Excel course to refresh in memory useful shortcuts and formulas and learn some new features since we used this program on an everyday basis during the internship. In the company, I had to process a large amount of data and optimize massive tables, so my productivity noticeably increased due to additional practice. This course was taken completely online, so I could be wherever I want – even in the forest.

After that, I took the course on Consumer Psychology, just because of my interest in this field. This course was a hybrid one, so students could join the lectures both online and offline at Hanken class or watch the lectures as records. For me, that was a very unusual format, because at most of the lectures I was the only one student presenting physically, and all the rest students were joining online. I also could choose to stay at home or in the office, but I still prefer live communication over the digital one, so it was a pleasure to ask questions and share some thoughts with the professor in person.

Despite the distances and novel format (you can read more about it here: https://www.hanken.fi/en/news/teachers-hanken-develop-innovative-teaching-methods), active communication and exchanging experiences among course participants were provided through chat, forum and video-connection, therefore this course was very intensive and insightful!

Me in the empty class

Looking back, I can say that this summer was definitely special and I’m very glad that students had an opportunity not only to choose from a wide range of summer courses at Hanken but also to study in a safe and innovative way. If you want to learn something new all the time, summer courses are a great option, enabling you to mix business and pleasure during your vacation 😊

If you have any questions about Hanken or Finland, feel free to text me here: anastasiia.strokova@student.hanken.fi

Enjoy the golden autumn!