Category: In English

Start Fresh

A new academic year, new luck, they say. Determined to get all the credits in the world, the students are piling up courses and workload. They tend to forget that university years are actually the most epic time of their lives. Tilt your situation and look at it from a different angle: Now life gives you a chance to dig deeper into your favourite spheres of knowledge and learn something fascinating. Why not take a course or two not directly related to your studies?

Do Some (back-) Ground Working

Maybe you need to joggle between part-time jobs, studies, and hobbies. Maybe you are lucky to be able to focus fully on your learning outcome. Whichever way, remember that your brain keeps working constantly – you don’t even need to trigger it forcefully. Take breaks from studying, go for a walk, meet friends, and play sports games outdoors. In the meanwhile, let those grey masses filling the space between your ears take care of the seemingly unsolvable problem in your homework in the background. Relaxing and balancing your lifestyle helps you indirectly with your work. Don’t cut short on that!

Stop Worrying

You will graduate, eventually. Students do it all the time, believe me. If you fail a course, or you find something too difficult – worry not. Constant practice is what keeps you moving forward. Worrying won’t help much. Instead, get up and try again. You’ll get that degree, sooner or later, so you might as well enjoy the ride.

Do the Networking

Your classmates from today might be your colleagues from tomorrow. Who says being a successful student constrains you to sitting all alone in a library? Network, teamwork, socialize, go to parties and meet new people! Oulu is the Silicon Valley of Finland – if you want to create your own start-up one day, you might as well find human resources already now.

Go Places

If you have ever dreamed of living abroad for a while, or you simply want to improve your English skills, or you are just curious – go on exchange. Now it is the time! You will get all the necessary support and financial aid from your university and government; you will have a reason and a learning agreement that keep you from falling behind in your curriculum, and you might come across an important person, place or professor for your future life path.

The nordic region, particularly the Scandinavian Arctic, has remained an area of relatively untapped potential, even though Arctic Europe is the 10th largest economical region in the world. Given the growing interest in the Arctic and its resources, a so-called Joint Arctic Agenda has come to being.

This Agenda is a joint venture between four Nordic universities: The University of Oulu and the University of Lapland in Finland, Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, and the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). By joining forces, Finland, Norway, and Sweden can better aim at achieve growth in the Arctic region.

This truly is an ambitious endeavor to undertake by the universities and their respective countries. However, the eventual success and continuous improvement of this cooperation will likely yield economic and social growth in the Scandi-navian Arctic region, which will in turn improve the lives of those living within it.

Through the Joint Arctic Agenda, the research capacities of the universities can be pooled together in order to address key opportunities in the Scandinavian Arctic region. Some of these opportunities include medicine electronic services, social work, and care for the elderly, as well as industrially relevant challenges such as renewables, safety, and environmental standards in extractive industries.

In the report “Growth from the North” released by the Prime Ministers’ Office Publications, four main drivers of growth are described; namely: liquefied natural gas and renewables, greener mining solutions, increased tourism, and ice and cold climate solutions. These drivers are meant to be nourished through joint regulatory frameworks (which would remove border obstacles), as well as standardization of education and qualification, among other things.

By developing joint study programs, the four universities aim to provide students with the tools and competences they need to tackle these challenges head-on.

Thus, by providing relevant courses and possible exchanges between the four universities, a student focusing on the Scandinavian Arctic can obtain different perspectives from the different. Preparing students to deal with these matters would lead to a well prepared workforce, and better decision-making in matters directly influencing the region.

To view the reports on prospects for economic growth in the Arctic and Northern regions visit the Arctic Europe Forum 2016 webpage. 

Food Supply

Start your day with a healthy breakfast Scandinavian-style early in the morning, return for lunch where you can choose between salad buffets, super-cheap meal and a bit fancier dishes, and conclude your day with a dinner! When studying in Oulu, you’ll never need to cook anymore.

Also the restaurants have changed lately: In January 2016, Fazer Amica took over most of the restaurants from the all-time-present Uniresta. Luckily, for us consumers there’s not much of a difference, the prices are the same, the restaurants can be found at the same spots, and you can get food from 7:45 onwards.

For the daily lunch-menus, check ruoka.kitchen, you’ll find both providers there!

Stay Connected

You surely know how to find your lecture halls in weboodi, your lecture material in Optima, and books and articles in the online-databases of the library, right?

But did you know there is even an app for our Uni? Tuudo (replaces Aapo) can soon be downloaded for Android and iOS, and it helps you stay on top of your schedule and the room-maze our Uni sometimes seems to be.

Mens sana en copore sano

All this eating and studying calls for some physical counter-balance! When the days get shorter and it’s too slippery outside to run around our beautiful Linnanmaa area, use the Uni’s facilities for staying healthy!

With the sportspass you can enter numerous gyms around the city, participate in classes for free or at low cost, or go swimming in one of Oulu’s pools.

Check out the details here: www.oulunkorkeakoululiikunta.fi or download the sports app (OKKL)!

TellUs Innovation Area

The probably biggest change has taken place in the former library Tellus, which is now the TellUs Innovation Area:  You can book group-work-rooms, hang out in the ‘nest’ for relaxing, have constructive meetings in cute cubicles or a bigger one at the stage. You can find a mentoring service, or become an entrepreneur and be supported by experts who already succeeded in that.

Put your CV to the acid test or connect with companies for your later life already. Check out more info on their webpage, or just pay a visit – there’s another café and hang-out area!

Relax And Chill

If you don’t feel like studying in a quiet room in the library Pegasus, which is also renewed (open till 7 pm on its longest days with an extra area till 9 pm), you could relax in one of the newly invented corners with sofas and armchairs you’ll find all across the campus.

If that’s too busy for you, find your guild’s room – there’s usually sofas, coffee, nice people and some games. Try it!

A newly opened, a bit churchy, quiet room close to L3 offers space for mediation and relaxation – working there is prohibited!

“Jobba” is a rather  elusive animal in general. Finnish Jobba is even more quirky and hard to catch even if you are armed with education, skills, experience and open mind.

Both Finnish and international students might struggle to find work here in Finland, especially the one matching their education. Recently, Minister of Education and Culture Sanni Grahn-Laasonen suggested that university funding should be distributed based on the measure of employment quality as nowadays there are several fields of study that are churning out too many unemployed.

If we speak about foreign students only, numerous graduates from Finland’s international degree programmes offered in English find themselves working as cleaners and dishwashers. According to data released by the country’s Centre for International Mobility (CIMO),  technology graduates have a 2% better than average employment rate, whereas the employment rate of those who had studied business and administration is 5–6% poorer than average. Just over half of foreign graduates stay after graduating from a Finnish university to work.

Let’s face it – with the high cost of living, the limited opportunities to learn the “difficult” language, the small and competitive labour market, the residence permit bureaucracy, chances of getting employed in Finland are rather slim. Thus, it is very important for international students to know this and plan their careers wisely. For example, one of the popular coping strategies of staying in Finland is taking up further studies, including 2nd Master’s or PhD programs.

The growing pool of global talent available for Finnish employers has not been efficiently used yet. Workplace diversity in Finland is advanced when it comes to women and disabled people, but so far there have been few efforts to increase cultural diversity. In a growing number of cases Finnish employers find international graduates either overqualified due to their international experience or irrelevant if the company doesn’t have any international operations.

So, what can you do? First of all, ask questions, investigate the opportunities of building a career in your field in Finland. Be more active and brave in expanding your social and professional networks and contacting employers. Consider entrepreneurship as a way to employment. And try to stay as down to earth as possible. The situation on the Finnish labour market is rather tricky at the moment – don’t put your career off to decide about till the last day of your studies.

Remarkable Flexibility

Examinarium is the new form of taking exams from our very own University of Oulu. The supervision is done with cameras and the dates and hours are flexible. This means you get to choose when to take your exam and in which time slot. You can make a reservation for an exam earliest 30 days before the exam date and latest 7 days before the exam date. The exam times can be 8-12, 12-16, and 16-20. The maximum students allowed per time slot is 24. If you wish to cancel your registration, you have to do it 3 days in advance.

Just A Few Steps And You’re In

Step 1: Agree with your teacher. Step 2: Register to the exam. Step 3: ???. Step 4: Profit. Alright,  maybe I skipped a step or two. Nevertheless, the registration is indeed done in the Optima environment and you must have an agreement with your teacher about it.

Examinarium Room Is Located In Linnanmaa

The room where the magic happens is on Linnanmaa campus, in room TL 102 in the corridor Fysiikankatu. This corridor is found between TellUs and Central Station, near the green coatracks. Can’t miss it!

Examinarium Also Takes A Summer Holiday

The Examinarium is closed during summer between July 4th and August 8th. So be sure to take this into account when planning your exams.

Save The Trees!

At the moment, exams in Examinarium are still paper-based. However, in the near future, examinations will be done electronically as so-called e-exams. This will hopefully mean less strain for your wrist while answering all the questions from your exam.