in english arkistot - Page 10 of 11 - Oulun ylioppilaslehti

Oulu on Air – Brace yourselves for Rattoradio.05!

Clean your shoes, do your hair and get your radio-faces ready: Oulu is on air! Live! Every year again, we have our very own student radio Rattoradio; and also this year, there’s going to be an English show among them. We met with the editor-in-chief, spent hours in training sessions and are already really excited to listen to the upcoming shows! If you need some background info, read on!

Ilmiöt In English

TEKSTI Bianca Beyer

KUVAT Alisa Tciriulnikova

After other student-ruled cities like Lappeenranta and Tampere had made it a thing, Oulu finally established its own Wappu-radio in 2013.

The idea is fairly easy: Have a radio with different shows on air 24/7 during Wappu. The execution? Surprisingly smooth, too!

On air you can theoretically sell advertising space for all sorts of deals: Equipment, a studio, cash, internet for a live-stream-option or pretty much anything you can think of. Even personnel if needed, but in Rattoradio the technically skilled boys and girls do almost everything themselves. Some students from the University of Applied Sciences have a journalistic background. By today, five years after its launch, even most of the equipment is owned by the non-profit organization Rattoradio itself. The music is played old school style via hundreds of CDs that are borrowed from the library or owned by the show-makers themselves.

Yes, there is a lot of troublesome work behind the entertainment!

By students for students

Who is behind all this? No one else than your fellow students, actually! In fact, why are you not one of them? Anyone can apply with an idea for a show as a producer or as some kind of other helper. Even though the slots have been planned for this year you may still be able to help. Fitting all show-ideas into the one-week-plus program has never been a problem so far, explains the 2017-editor-in-chief Lauri Pekkarinen. Every year the radio is improved and becomes more professional. A formal application including time slot preferences it is now possible to give space to old and new members in a fair and equal manner.

Around 80 people have announced their interest this year interest for what? Volunteering?. On three days ,the 21st, 26th and 28th of April, between noon and 14 o’clock, the English show “In Your Mama’s House” can be listened both on radio via 98,1 MHz and online. Rattoradio is also interactive which means that the listeners can send out song requests, ideas and random thoughts through a shout-box on the website, or call the studio if they want to hear their voice on air.

Rattoradio won’t ever leave you during Wappu: There is never a minute without a show from April 20th until the day the freshmen are baptized in the river on April 30th. Then it is all over and finally the hosts can enjoy the Wappu celebrations as well.

Lauri remembers the most challenging part of his Rattoradio career, which goes back to the very beginning, to be one 11-hour-show without sleep. Bathroom breaks are only possible during songs. Did you know that a radio show might get a fine from Finnish authorities if the silence lasts for too long? This is some serious business here!

You must obey the rules

The producers and hosts of Rattoradio take their job very seriously even though it’s all voluntary and for fun.

In order for everyone to be prepared for the job there are training sessions organized by the board of the organization to practice speaking, behaving and dealing with unexpected situations. No one should ever forget the one and only Golden Rule of Rattoradio, which is the No-Narcotics rule. Even though it might be challenging during a party-time like Wappu and even though we might find ourselves really funny when we are wasted, let’s be honest: we probably are not. Also, the equipment is just a little bit too expensive to be washed in a beer-bath.

Rule number two is about using swearwords. This rule may be circumvented with money, since hosts who know they are going to use the V-word inevitably in a frequent manner even pay in advance into the swear-jar.

The essence of a smoothly working radio-show is, just like in any well-working relationship, mystery. The studio is a secret place: Even the hosts themselves just recently found out where to show up on Thursday.

It has happened too many times in recent years that uninvited guests have showed up and wanted to “contribute” to the show. Rumor has it that something bad happened when all chairmen of the technical guilds were invited to a show at the same time, which has resulted in having them only one-by-one nowadays. No one wants to talk about the incident in detail since it must have been very traumatizing.

You see, besides the fact that this is a Wappu-program, a time in which people are usually not their brightest selves, Rattoradio is operating rather professionally. After all, the volunteers have a face to lose in front of sponsors and here in Oulu we try to do everything just a little bit better than in other student cities.

Stay tuned online or through your radio

It sounds that by sticking to a few rules there are fun times ahead when being a part of Rattoradio. Producing and hosting an own show, playing one’s favourite music and maybe even being the background entertainment for one of the Wappu-parties in Teekkaritalo is a great opportunity for stage hogs.

Furthermore, just being in the audience while your friends are hosting is kind of like having a pre-party with them while they just happen to sit in front of a microphone. So don’t miss the shows, starting on 20th of April. If you got interested in being a part of this experience, just contact and see how you can help!

Julkaistu 20.4.20171.2.2023

Bianca Beyer

When I don’t sit over plans to erase all evil and meet unicorns, or dream of eating cotton candy, I believe in hard facts and science, doing my PhD in Accounting at the University of Oulu. Using writing as an information transmitter, outlet for creativity or simply for mere entertainment, I believe I am totally living the dream with all my current jobs. Blog: beapproved.wordpress.com

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An A For Your Prof?

Have you ever been at a boring lecture delivered by some phlegmy professor that would talk himself to sleep while reading his slides for the millionth time? You do try not to fall asleep together with the professor because this is exam-related and everything. But in the end you give up and decide to work through the slides on your own later at home.

In English

TEKSTI Bianca Beyer

KUVAT Bianca Beyer

Usually we enter a university to learn something. We are there because we want to. And no one can stop us from soaking up the knowledge provided by the teachers; no one but the teachers themselves, ironically.

Recall your school years: you were forced to spend hours of your life on listening to something that seemed to make no sense or to be irrelevant for you personally. You dreamt about the day when you could finally make your own decisions and choose to learn the things you were really interested in. They told you to wait till you were a university student, and here you are with all this freedom of choice. But your reality is still far from your dreams.

No Pedagogues to Hold Our Hands

Let’s face it, university teachers are no high school teachers. We don’t need someone to keep us focused and motivated anymore. We are no longer kids in puberty with limited attention span – we are about to become professionals who have their fate in their own hands.

Being motivated and interested is our own duty, and that of the tea-cher is merely to provide us with knowledge. The pedagogical aspects are not really needed anymore. Nevertheless, the vast differences in the quality of teaching still influence the learning process.

To understand why there is no clear guideline, let’s sketch how a university works. The job of a Faculty is tripartite, being research, teaching, and service. Students’ successful graduation assures financing, in Finland provided by tax payers, as all universities here are public.

In order to assist a successful graduation, professors do not only conduct research, but also pass on their knowledge to the students. It is all intertwined, and yet the biggest background of a professor is usually built on her or his research.

This might create a gap between demand and supply – a professor can be a brilliant mind in a certain field, but can have no idea how to deal with people (especially students).

Being On The Other Side

Probably none of the less perfect ones chooses to be that way. Even though my experience as a teacher is thinly scattered, I also got my two cents on being “on the other side of the room”. It is scarier than you might think; if you are for instance afraid of giving presentations, multiply this fear by a hundred, and there you go.

It seems easy to judge from the audience. In fact, evaluation is not only wished for – at least at the University of Oulu it is common practice to give feedback after a course – but also the only way to help a teacher turn into a better one. Contrarily, anonymous online rating systems with one category being “hotness” seem not very sensible.

Interested, focused students, vivid discussions – these are the lectures both teachers and students dream of. In order to make that happen, not only a good teacher is required, but also good students.

This is what you learn standing on the other side. While it is important that no one is forced to participate, as everyone is responsible for his or her own learning progress as an adult, experienced professors even manage to have discussion rounds in huge lecture halls!

Finnish shyness might be a challenge, but no hindrance – after all, as with everything, practice is what lets us become more comfortable in the situations we fear. This applies for both teacher and student.

A Perfect Teacher – Too Good To Be True?

Good teachers are usually those who passionately teach what they believe in and work with. They have seen theory applied and not spent their entire life in an office over books. They know the problems that can occur, and they understand their audience. They act as a guide rather than as a lecturer, triggering the students to apply the knowledge themselves in order to find a solution.

Yes – they do exist. In my years as a student I had the honor to come across a couple of them, and I might still remember most of their lectures. If you happen to have a teacher who can explain you the most abstract things with real life examples, you probably have found one as well.

And by evaluating your lecture(r)s you help becoming the others a step closer to those – just keep in mind: Constructive criticism is what is always welcome.

Julkaistu 9.12.20151.2.2023

Bianca Beyer

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Hi 5, Finnish Christmas Traditions

It’s that time of the year again when Mr. and Mrs. Claus dust off their overalls and prepare for the big day. Hold on to your Santa Hats (Tonttulakki) and join me exploring Christmas traditions here in Finland.

In English

TEKSTI Marcelo Goldmann

Glögi And The Mystery of The Almond in The Porridge

On Christmas Eve you crave something warm to get your heat up, and what better way than with a hot cup of Glögi. It is similar to German and Austrian Glühwein and it can be served with raisins and almonds. You can get it ready-made at any food store in Oulu – just warm it up in your favourite pot. The Christmas rice porridge (riisipuuro) with hidden almond is another tradition. Whoever happens to find the almond will be the receiver of good fortune. In the middle ages, a coin or a bean would be hidden in the food instead, and whoever had the bean would decide who among the guests would be providing entertainment for all the other guests.

Stealing A Tree

An exciting adventure: sneaking into your neighbor’s forest and stealing a Christmas tree. I don’t recommend you trying this, however. That is, unless you know the owner of the forest and ask for permission; in which case it’s not technically stealing but you can pretend to make it more exciting.

The Snowman

No Finnish Christmas would ever be complete without the rerun of The Snowman on TV. Based on the popular children’s book by the same name which was illustrated in 1978 in the U.K., The Snowman was adapted to a 26 minute animation for television in 1982, and has since become a staple of Christmas with its touching story and gorgeous cinematics. The awesome song that plays in the middle of the animation, Walking in the Air, is composed by Howard Blake and more recently covered by the one and only Nightwish.

Christmas Calendar

One of the most fun things to do is to have a Christmas calendar, which normally is a rectangular box of chocolates with which not only you get to count the days left until Christmas Eve, but also you open the “doors” on certain days and you retrieve a present. It’s like Christmas Eve every day.

Joulupukki

Christmas wouldn’t be complete without our beloved old Nordic man with the big belly, the Santa Claus or as he is known here – Joulupukki. One of the origin stories from Joulupukki dates back to the 17th century and was previously known Nuuttipukki. Young men would dress in inverted fur jackets and leather masks and would go from house to house demanding the leftover foods and alcoholic beverages. If they were denied the goodies, they would threaten to trash the place. Nobody knows how the story went from a food stealer to a jolly gift giver but if I had to take a guess, I would say Santa had some rowdy young days and then reformed himself.

Julkaistu 9.12.20151.2.2023

Marcelo Goldmann

A Doctor of Chemical Engineering from the University of Oulu. "Life is like a rubber duckie, you gotta keep it afloat to see its splendor." Instagram: @marcelogman

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Foods of Power

Finland is known for its climate and love of sauna. Finland, however, is not particularly known for its cuisine. Finnish traditional food does not seem to appeal to the globalized audience. Some even dare to say it is not very tasty. But it does tend to be very healthy. Why? Well, because it is prepared with love, obviously. And because of Superfoods.

In English

TEKSTI Marcelo Goldmann

KUVAT Alisa Tciriulnikova

What? You haven’t heard of superfoods? Surely you’ve heard of Superfoods. Those fancy dancy foods, which are supposed to be extremely healthy and make you younger and stronger and faster, and give you the ability to fly.

All right, so I might be exaggerating just a tiny bit. Depending whom you ask and if the Internet is to be believed (as if the internet would lie), superfoods are foods with supposed superior health benefits and those, which have such a high concentration of nutrients that just a relatively small amount of it can provide nutrition comparable to larger amounts of other foods.

Some say “superfood” is just a glamorous word for exotic food to increase sales and price. You may have heard of (or seen in the supermarket) chia seeds, algae, almonds, cherries, coconut, raw cacao, berries; you know, the usual suspects. Perhaps, the most well-known Finnish superfoods are its berries, some of which are: blueberry (mustikka), sea buckthorne (tyrni), cloudberry (lakka), lingonberry (puolukka), cranberry (karpalo), crowberry (variksenmarja), and blackcurrant (mustaherukka).

The truth is a bit of column A, and a bit of column B; but isn’t it always? Suffice to say, there is some truth to both claims: superfoods tend to provide high density of nutrition, having a high amount of vitamins and minerals, and some of them tend to be rather pricey.

The Rural Women’s Advisory Organisation (Maa- ja kotitalousnaiset) has begun a project called Superruokkaa Pohjolasta (Superfood from the North) in which they are raising awareness of the availability of superfoods right here in the North that we perhaps had not paid enough attention to. These are foods which you might be ignoring every time you go to the shop!

By rebranding these foods as Superfoods, they hope to increase our awareness of these very nutritional and readily available foods.

For example, oats (kaura), rye (ruis), as well as fish like the whitefish (siika), vendance (muikku), and pike (hauki); not to mention the delicious mushrooms like the chantarelle (kantarelli) and trumpets (suppilovahvero). And what about root veggies and stem veggies, didn’t you know they are very high on nutrients? There is beetroot (punajuuri), rutabaga (lanttu), radish (retiisi), broccoli (parsakaali), and cauliflower (kukkakaali), brussel sprouts (ruusukaali), and ginger (inkivääri).

All of these are “Nordicly” available, at decent prices, and just so happen to be Superfoods.

Don’t be missing out – get some Nordic superfoods and give your body some well-deserved nutrition. You can find more information at maajakotitalousnaiset.fi, where you will also find recipes for preparation of meals with superfood (only in Finnish so far). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have me some sieni-juusto-pippurikermamuhennos on top of some steamed parsakaali and kukkakaali. Nom nom nom!

Julkaistu 11.11.20151.2.2023

Marcelo Goldmann

A Doctor of Chemical Engineering from the University of Oulu. "Life is like a rubber duckie, you gotta keep it afloat to see its splendor." Instagram: @marcelogman

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New Solar System Research Opportunity At Our University

The International Space Station, the NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Europa Multiple Flyby Mission - these are all international scientific collaborations that are considered humankind’s most ambitious experiments. And do you know that the University of Oulu is now taking an active part in NASA’s Mission to Moon Europa?

In English

TEKSTI Margarita Khartanovich

KUVAT Alisa Tciriulnikova

We asked Juergen Schmidt, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oulu, how the university happened to become part of a NASA mission.

“I have been working with Sascha Kempf (a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, LASP, at the University of Colorado) for a long time in the team of the Cosmic Dust Analyser instrument on board the ESA/NASA Cassini spacecraft at Saturn,” said Schmidt.

“After Kempf had accepted a position at LASP, I became a Co-investigator of his proposal to NASA for the development and building of SUDA for future space missions. This instrument was recently selected by NASA for the forthcoming Jupiter mission.”

This exciting collaboration between the Faculty of Science of the University of Oulu and LASP of the University of Colorado is an obvious advantage of internationalization, fully supported by the administration of both universities. Just to understand the scale of the project we will tell you that in 2016 NASA will spend 30 million dollars to formulate the mission to Europa. It has already selected nine science instruments (and SUDA is one of them) to investigate whether the mysterious icy moon could harbour conditions suitable for life.

“This is a giant step in our search for oases that could support life in our own celestial backyard,” said Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“We’re confident that this versatile set of science instruments will produce exciting discoveries on a much-anticipated mission.”

Another interesting fact about this project is that students can make their contribution too.

“Students from the University of Oulu can participate in this project”, confirms Schmidt.

“I will begin to formulate tasks of Bachelor’s and Master’s theses related to the dust instrument on the mission. Besides, students may have an opportunity to do their doctoral studies in this context.”

According to Professor Schmidt, working on the international projects of this kind is an excellent reference for students, which can boost their chances in first-class research institutions. And for Finland it might be a good boost too, for its scientific recognition globally.

Julkaistu 21.10.20151.2.2023

Margarita Khartanovich

UUNI Editor, Master’s degree in Journalism (University of Tampere). Interested in politics, history, music, social issues and education. Twitter: @marthatcher

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Hi 5, Myths About Sweden Busted

Our reporter has moved to Sweden, and here are her views on what it is like.

In English

TEKSTI Bianca Beyer

1. Swedes Are Less Distant – Superficially!

They say an introverted Finn looks at his shoes when talking to you; an extroverted Finn looks at your shoes. And it’s true! Unless you ask for something specific, they prefer to keep at a distance. On the contrary, Swedes would rather approach you with a smile, shake hands, introduce themselves and start a friendly small talk. So you get an impression that they are way more open. In fact, they only want to look more sociable while being as introverted as the Finns. At least in Finland you know right away where you are at.

2. “Royal” Clubbing Culture

Stockholm is twice the size of Helsinki when it comes to inhabitants, but is that really a reason to act all posh when it comes to clubbing? Firstly, you need to have your name on a guest-list to avoid spending a fortune on an entrance ticket. And if before approaching the overpriced wardrobe you don’t put all your belongings in the purse, they just take them in the blink of an eye and charge you for each of them separately. Secondly, having “drunk eyes” is already a criterion for being kicked out of a club – not imaginable in Finland. The only plus is that people dance in Swedish clubs instead of pushing each other.

3. All Swedes Are Gay? No Way, José!

Finns referring to Swedes as gay is a big misunderstanding, probably driven by the out-dated misconception of recognizing someone’s sexuality by clothing. Now here’s the breaking news: You can take good care of your outer appearance. Manliness is not related to dirty fingernails and long greasy hair. If you mean hipster beards, trench coats or smart-casual looks, they are simply fashion trends that come and go. And some of them are probably set in Sweden.

4. Tolerance Levels

When it comes to official measures taken against discrimination, Sweden is a few steps ahead of Finland. Only last year Finland managed to get enough votes to pass the law for same-sex marriage, while Sweden did that back in 2009. When it comes to immigrants, Sweden hosts almost four times the amount of Finland. When following the media, Finland seems to be more concerned about preserving its own culture than the neighboring country, which does not even keep track of ethnic groups in their statistics. And with a non-interchangeable parental leave also women’s rights are more secured in Sweden than in Finland.

5. 9-to-5? Not With The Swedes!

Recently, Swedish media have been discussing the uprising trend to shifting to a 6-hour workday. Even in the public sector this has been pulled off already: nurses work 6 instead of 8 hours for the same pay. This results in happier, less exhausted and, therefore, more productive employees, who have more time for their families, sports and hobbies now.

Julkaistu 21.10.20151.2.2023