Erasmus Report University of Helsinki Autumn semester 2018-2019
Franka de Haan Frankadehaan@live.nl
My name is Franka. I am a third year IRIO student and I took the opportunity and went abroad to Helsinki for a study abroad semester. I had an absolutely wonderful experience.
Helsinki is a really nice modern city located in the south of Finland. It is a city clearly captured between the west and the east, and therefore quite interesting from an IRIO perspective. Although it is a capital city, it is not a very big or busy city. It has beautiful parks, a lively harbour and a cosy city centre.
I was registered at the University of Helsinki as a History student at the faculty of arts. This posed some problems. Although the courses vary over the years, there are usually not a lot of English- taught history courses. You only pick your courses when you have arrived in Helsinki, so even though I found some appropriate courses on the website, I could not follow all of them because some were cancelled and others appeared to be at the same time. In fact, I only managed to follow one English history course (Intellectual History of Political Economy). Apart from that one I followed 3 other courses from the faculty of arts (Comparative Politics of Post-Soviet Eurasia, Religion and Peace Mediation – master course- , Intercultural Approaches to Transnational Security -master course) and two of the faculty of social sciences (Global Media and Politics, Comparative Politics) . All of them had a study load of 5ECTS. This period of choosing courses was a little frustrating to me because I wanted to do more courses from the faculty of social sciences, but the University of Helsinki did not allow me.
I was a little disappointed by the lack of help from the University of Helsinki in this regard. However, if you speak Swedish and/or go in with an open mind you should be fine. Thankfully the exchange coordinators in Groningen did help me quite a lot with these struggles, and in the end I was quite content with the courses and passed all of them.
The course system is a little different from the Groningen one. There is not a huge gap between the master and the bachelor courses and it was easy to follow both of them. Even though they all had the same amount of ECTS, the workload was very different. Some had a class only once a week, others twice a week. Some of them took place the entire semester whereas others only about 7 weeks.
There is quite a lot of academic freedom: most classes do not have an attendance requirement and you are able to take classes and then drop them again when you do not like them. Teachers are very approachable and kind. The quality of education is very good, but not as challenging as my IRIO programme in Groningen. I did not write any exams; all grades were given to me as a result of class participation or essay writing. The grading system of Finland goes from 1 to 5, all of them being a pass. It is not hard to pass a course, and although the courses are not necessarily easy, hard work gets rewarded! I got three 5’s and three 3’s. The semesters are relatively short, which can be quite nice if you want to go traveling or just get back home early for Christmas.
Finland is a Nordic country, and therefore quite expensive. Groceries are doable; it is a little more expensive than du, but not crazily, especially when you do your shopping at Lidl. Eating out or drinking in café’s however, is really expensive. You are lucky to get a beer that is under 5 euro’s and going out for dinner is really not cheap. After living there for a while, you will find the cheap places, like in the Kallio neighbourhood, but take into account that your expenses will definitely be higher than in Groningen. As for housing, there are two organizations in Helsinki that are very helpful: HOAS and UniHome. They both offer homes for international students, the majority of them being a studio- room in a complex on a campus for about 700,- a month. That’s expensive, but definitely a good deal for downtown Helsinki. Getting a room in a shared house is really hard, as most Helsinki students like to live by themselves. Take any offer you can get, as getting a place to stay by yourself is rather difficult and expensive. I think I spent 400,- a month excluding rent.
I have not encountered a lot of problems during my stay. People are shy, but friendly and helpful. I got two tutors that took me, and 10 others, around Helsinki the first couple of days. I ended up bonding with this group a whole lot, so it was a really good way to start the semester. The weather
can be cold (it was -13 when I left in December), and the days get really dark in November-February, but with some vitamin D pills and enough activity this does not become a problem.
As for personal recommendations: Finnish Lapland was the most magical destination I have ever been! A travel there is really expensive but worth every penny. I did some husky sleighing, saw the northern lights and went to the arctic ocean. Furthermore, I went to St. Petersburg in Russia which was also really wonderful. Under certain preconditions you can go to Russia without a Visa. It is really easy and cheap to go Estonia by boat and really nice to go to Talinn for a day. But going out of Finland is not necessary! I really learned to love the country with its beautiful nature, its cosy cities and impressive national parks.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!
