Nordic Brilliance Blogs

It is winter break and after so many hectic days of walking on frozen water and dark morning lectures, finally the break is here! It is quite a busy life here at Hanken, bundled up with diversified school work and social life. We have always to find time outside our schedule for personal rejuvenation, just to feel normal amidst everything happening around.

Winter is at its peak during the 3rd period, and to escape all the coldness and icy streets I took a trip to Berlin to visit my friends studying at the Berlin University. It has always been my travel goal to travel to Berlin and experience life from my own perspective outside books, internet or other people view point.

Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany, with a population of approximately 3.5 million people. Berlin is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany on the banks of rivers Spree and Havel, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has about 6 million residents from more than 180 nations.

Where are my binoculars and where is my selfie-stick? I had the whole night to pack and get ready for berlin. How could a night be so short, with barely 4 hours of sleep? I had to rush, I would be late for the train, I would miss my flight. Where are my travel documents? Where is my toothbrush? (the Finish style). Am I going to be late, or am I going to freeze cold, it is so cold outside.

Two hours of flight and I was ready in Berlin, how were my friends enthusiastically waiting for a snow man, only to arrive as a “Michelin” guy. I was ready, ready with my travel diary to explore, learn and enjoy my short stay.

Each new day yielded greater insights memorial church, Muslim island, Reichstag and Brandenburgh Gate, just to mention but a few. I could not exhaust my travel wish list, there was so much to see. The food was great too, there was this local snacks pretzel, currywurst, and hackepeter, in addition to Eirkuchen and Eisbein meals. I could not get enough of it. This gave me refreshed life perspective outside the ever-busy research work and strict deadlines. The German sunshine was up and bright throughout the week and the temperature ranged between 6-12 degrees, the street and shopping malls were always full. The German people are more social, something that was contrary from most people’s perception. Public places were all flocked the young and the old, men, women and children. It is interesting how much fun we had within and outside of Germany.

Berlin was everything to me during the winter break, between the many road trips we took and the night life, to say the least we had lot of fun in Hanover, Bremen and also to Prague Czech Republic. How could a winter break be so short, even before I could exhaust my wish list and my travel diary, I had to return to Finland.

What a break! The break was the most delightful memories, “wow that, …”, prevailed during the flight, yet at the destination point it’s just like going back to a small cocoon that needed to be thawed to keep it even more lively.

.. and many more periodic breaks rocks…

Hey, guys! It’s Maria again. As the exam week has finished, we all could breathe a sigh of relief. While you have already had the opportunity to follow some of the events happening at Hanken from the previous blog posts (and you can also check Hanken’s official Instagram to keep up to date with the current events), I thought that this time it might be interesting for you to get to know a bit more about the fun part of the studies at Hanken: namely, the student life. This idea popped into my head as it was just yesterday we had a sitz organized by the Master’s Committee and Exchange Committee of the Student Union.

However, first things first: you might be wondering what a sitz is. I will not invent anything new here and will refer to our beloved Wikipedia: “A sittning (“sitting”, often shortened to sits or sitz) is in Sweden and Finland a seated meal held within a set time frame. The term is also used to denote the part of a party that is a seated meal. Though it can refer to any kind of meal, it is often used to refer to a student sittning.” To my knowledge, in Finland those are only Swedish schools that have a tradition of organizing sitzes, so no wonder they are so popular in Hanken.

This Saturday the two student union’s committees, the master’s committee and exchange committee, have combined their forces to throw an amazingly nerdy sitz called “E=MC^2”.

Photo by Henna Konsti

That is one feature of the sitz: there is always a theme according to which the guests should be dressed. However, it was not only about the costumes, the party was full of nerdy facts and interesting competitions, which kept the audience entertained and yet gave some food for thought.

There are more traditions connected with the sitzes, however this is somethig one can experience only by attending one of those themselves.

Take care,
Maria.

Next week at Hanken is exams week and, needless to say, Hanken has been very lively throughout the whole past week. You could see students trying to memorise those last pieces of information at literally every corner of Hanken. Even on Friday’s evening!

I am from Hanken’s Department of Economics myself and I believe that we, economists at Hanken, live on a somewhat different schedule than our counterparts from other departments. We might have more ‘exam weeks’ (but not necessarily more exams than others, do not be scared!) throughout the year as teaching for Hanken’s economists is under cooperation with Aalto University and University of Helsinki. So besides Hanken, we also have lectures at the premises of Aalto School of Business, University of Helsinki and Helsinki Center of Economic Research or simply HECER. Needless to say, all three universities keep us engaged throughout the whole year but we cannot complain as we receive the best knowledge in the field of Economics as each university has its key strengths. This is what me and my fellow students really appreciate at our department.

Apart from studying in the library, this week hankeits had a possibility to attend couple interesting guest lectures. Esa Jokivuolle, Research Advisor at the Bank of Finland, gave a lecture on changes in assessment of credit risk of a loan portfolio and bank capital requirements after the recent financial crisis for the course of Banking and Finance. Those interested in entrepreneurship could attend ‘Entrepreneurial afternoon’ with four entrepreneurship experts sharing their best tips on becoming an entrepreneur. Guest lectures is something I personally love since I believe that practicalities are as important as theory and Hanken does a great job providing us with both.

No one can ever deny that studying is extremelly fun. However, I would like to shift your attention to student life in Finland and something entertaining that happened this week. Let me ask you what is the craziest way you have ever went downhill during winter? I remember me and my five friends tried to do that on a sledge built for two and back then I thought it was pretty funny. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that whatever your answer is, you will find students in Finland taking this activity to another level. On Shrove Tuesday, one of the biggest student events called ‘Laskiaisrieha’ takes place at Helsinki’s Kaivopuisto park. Basically, it is a huge sledging competition of students but sledges they use are not the ones you can buy at the local department store. Students construct crazy sledges looking like sport cars or dragons and usually engineering students unleash the true potential of their creativity here. I have heard that one year there was a sauna going down hill, can you imagine that? The event is followed by tasting Finnish treat – cream-filled bun – called ‘laskiaispulla’. And in the evening, there is a big after-party, so you definitely do not want to miss out all the fun. More information and videos about the event can be found here.

This was all that I wanted to share with you for now! By the way, this was my first blog entry ever, so please bear with the rookie!

Also, I would like to wish everyone a successful exams week and fun time afterwards.

Yours,

Vytas.

However, the week was full of different kind of events, which I am more than happy to share with you. As a Corporate Governance student myself, I will be talking about what our life is like at Hanken. In the beginning of the week we had a tour to Maria 0-1, a community house for ambitious and scalable tech start-ups, supported by the city of Helsinki and the European Union, which we organized together with the Hanken Corporate Governance Student Association (HCGSA). It is quite funny that the house has the same name as I do, but that is a totally different story.

During the tour it was really interesting to discover all the start-ups that are currently present there in Maria and get some inspiration from them to potentially start a company of my own someday. By the way, did you know, that Finland has a lot of quite well-known start-ups, and in particular in gaming industry? Oh well, but I am not going to talk about that any more since it would make another blog post, but that is definitely something to discover.

However, it was not the only event we had with the HCGSA this week. Later on we had an alumni dinner, which is a nice way to meet new people and old friends who have already graduated. I should say that Corporate Governance students are usually not that big a group of people, but because of this we are able to maintain close connections with each other, and these kind of events are one way to do that. Hearing inspiring stories of our alumni definitely is very encouraging for those of us who are still in search of a job. Moreover, the director of the Corporate Governance program, Prof. Tom Berglund, encourages our student association to host different kind of events (traditionally, we have three dinners per academic year, where we meet with students and academic stuff in a more informal atmosphere, plus other events which vary from year to year), and always attends them himself.

I mean, where else you can be that close to your professors, right? In Hanken that is the case, we interact with our teachers very often apart from the lectures.

Also the Hanken Centre for Corporate Governance (https://www.hanken.fi/en/about-hanken/organisation/departments-and-subjects/department-accounting-and-commercial-law/hanken) regularly organizes guest lectures by high profile speakers, which are a nice way to get to see how the theoretical concepts we learn apply in real life, as well as get some valuable contacts. We had one this week by Philip Aminoff, who talked about the Finnish and European experience of facilitating peer to peer learning among board members.

There certainly are plenty of other things going on at Hanken every day, but I can’t really be present on all of them. One I can say for sure: it will never get boring here!

Best of luck!

Mariia

Tiny as it maybe compared to other universities in Finland, Hanken contains a whole world inside of it (and one you’d be reluctant to leave when the time comes, trust me!).  There are so many activities arranged by the various student associations that sometimes it is very hard to keep track of everything happening here!

Since I’m a finance student, I’m more in tune with what is going on in the finance department. HankInvest is the student association for all finance students at Hanken (you can visit the website here to stay updated about the association: http://hankinvest.org/). This year’s newly elected board had its kickoff event on the 3^rd of February.  It was an amazing night, with live music and great food, and offered the invaluable opportunity to network with people in the same profession as you (the people who’d actually be looking at your job applications aka your future bosses!).

A few days after that, on February 8, we had a career night in finance, where students were told how to break into Management Consulting and Investment Banking – something I’m very interested in after I graduate! This event focused on the interview and application process, and the representatives gave examples of how the process works. In the second half there was a panel discussion with interns from JP Morgan, McKinsey, EY etc. Such career nights are regularly held for most majors offered at Hanken (but HankInvest is perhaps the most active in arranging these!), and offer invaluable insights into the practical life of working at such institutions. As you can see, after all the serious talk, people let loose with some partying.

In terms of courses, Hanken has much to offer. Probably one of the best courses I’ve taken so far (and definitely the most practical one in terms of landing my dream job) has been Cases in Finance. The top finance students are handpicked by our finance professor; Timo Korkeamäki to work on a different case each week with a number of top firms from Helsinki and Stockholm. So far, we have worked with PwC, S&P and Lazard. Each time we have received individual feedback on our work from representatives of these intuitions, and have clearly been told what is expected in a presentation should we choose to work at these institutions. The best part is that we’ve been encouraged to contact these representatives directly should we choose to apply for internships!

Hanken hasn’t been even been open for a month since 2017 started, and so much has happened already, with much more to come! Other student ambassadors will be keeping you updated about activities within their departments, as well as the legendary parties thrown by the masters’ committee. 

There is so much more I could write; one blog post can’t possibly capture the colors of  student life at Hanken. I just wanted to give my perspective on things that are a part of my life here at Hanken, and I hope you’d be curious enough to come join us someday!

A special thanks to HankInvest for all the pictures!

Sasha

Now I’m officially handing over this blog to our International Student Ambassadors. If you ever need the more official version of things get in touch. You can always reach us on masters@hanken.fi.

Hanna
Head of Marketing