As I return to reality, my reality being heading back to San Francisco for another coop term at Tile, I can’t help but reflect on my four months on exchange in Oulu, Finland. Whenever I speak to family or friends, the first question they tend to ask is “How was exchange?”, and it seems as though my answer has always been a bit more negative than intended. I think I’m still dealing with recovering from the limited sunlight exposure I had in Northern Finland. While exchange, like all experiences, had its challenges, there were a lot of wonderful things that came out of the experience too. And so, as a final blog post for the time being, I wanted to take a couple minutes and reflect on my study abroad adventure.
Let’s start with the positives. One of the great things about studying abroad in Finland, and something I may not have even had the chance to experience in other countries, was that for the first time I got to immerse myself in a truly different culture. My past internships had allowed me to spend four months in Calgary and San Francisco in Canada and the United States, respectively, but both those cities offer a similar cultural experience to my home city of Toronto. Finland, on the other hand, was a whole new ballgame. I still remember the first time I went grocery shopping and how I had to ask my kummi (peer guide) to translate everything since all the labels were in Finnish. While it took me a couple more grocery trips to figure it out, by the end of the term I was able to identify ingredients in packaged foods and actually search for produce by the Finnish name. The cultural immersion extends to music, food, and even mannerisms. While I can’t say I prefer the reserved Finnish persona to the stereotypical friendly Canadian, I think the somewhat introverted manner of Finns helped me get better at handling silence and being by myself. As I discovered through my solo travels, it’s actually great to be able to have a meal alone or sit beside strangers in silence instead of consistently trying to make friends and conversations. That leads me to my second point, being in Finland for four months gave me the opportunity to travel to my heart’s content. In the past four months I travelled to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary. I most definitely wouldn’t have had the chance to see all those places if I had stayed back home at the University of Waterloo. When I wasn’t traveling, I was spending most of my time with my floormates in my residence Tirolintie. Building an international community of friends was one of the best things that came out of my exchange and is my third positive point. My conversations with my new friends about the differences in even the little things in our home countries opened my eyes further to how different things can be around the world. That’s something you don’t always see when traveling to a country for a week. While it was tough saying goodbye, we’re all walking away from the exchange with a little more knowledge on how things work around the world, and an international network of couches to crash on in our future travels. Last but not least, studying abroad in Finland exposed me to differences in lifestyle and business in other countries. Having to interact with banks and phone companies, for example, demonstrated to me the differences that exist in customer service and work ethic in organizations. I always thought that I wanted to one day go and work abroad for a year or two somewhere in Europe. I hadn’t really thought about how different countries in the EU could be from a working perspective, so I’m thankful for exchange for opening my eyes to this.
As with any experience, exchange wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. In fact my first problem relates to exactly that. Sunshine. Or in Northern Finland, lack of it. Finland has crazy long days in the summer, but unfortunately winters have equivalently long nights. In my last two months there, the day went from dark, to “light”, to dark again. The light lasted only about 3 hours and given the cloudy skies and low sun elevation angle, it was just light and not actually sunny. When people told me the darkness would get to me I thought they were just exaggerating. But my Vitamin D pills and optimism were not strong enough to battle the lethargy and sadness that comes with not seeing the sun. There would be times were I could feel that those around me were also just as grumpy or tired due to what felt like the constant darkness. While I survived the term, I definitely wouldn’t want live in a place that dark for an extended period of time in the future. My second problem with my exchange term in Oulu was the lack of academic challenge I felt from the University of Oulu. Let’s be honest. No one’s primary reason for going on exchange is school. It wasn’t mine either. Exchange is about immersing yourself in a new culture, meeting new people, and traveling to exciting places. However, I was still required to take my full engineering course load during the term. Despite taking masters level courses at the University of Oulu (because they were deemed equivalents to my undergraduate courses at UW), I found the classes to be quite easy, unengaging, and lacking real world applications. This was quite different to my experiences at the University of Waterloo. In some of my courses, course examinations or projects had no dependency on the material being covered in lectures, so lecture content was rarely being applied to real world problems. And despite classes being less challenging, students are allowed to retake exams twice in the term with only their highest grade counting. This is very unlike my home institution. The bright side of all this was that I was able to complete all my school requirements and devote free time to doing some self-study on the side in topics that were of interest to me. And of course when I had a break from school I could travel. However, my placement of Oulu in Finland made traveling quite a big hassle. Flights and ferries leave from Helsinki, a full 600km, 1 hour flight, and 9 hour bus ride away. Of course being students, the bus ride was really the only budget friendly option, with even that being $30 one way. I didn’t really choose to be in Oulu as opposed to a more central city somewhere in the world, but for students considering exchange with their main motivation being traveling, I would highly recommend picking a city that is either the capital or has an international airport or train station if you have a choice.
Okay, so when I look at my pros and cons list in writing, I definitely think my pros outweigh the cons no matter how bad the weather was and how many uncomfortable 9 hour overnight bus rides it took to explore all the countries I did. All in all, exchange was a really great experience that taught me two main things:
Firstly, I am so so grateful for the life I have. From studying at the University of Waterloo, having the chance to gain real world experience through coop, and working in environments where people around me are really motivated, I have gained such a higher level of appreciation for the life I live back home.
Secondly, while I truly enjoyed my travels and fully intend on exploring as many of the remaining 165/195 countries I have yet to see in the future, I have realized that I wouldn’t be content with a life of just traveling. I used to think that one of my many ideal worlds would be having the opportunity to just travel everyday for the rest of my life. But what I realized on my travels was that I would never truly be satisfied with that lifestyle, primarily because I wouldn’t be actively working towards anything. Maybe one day I’ll have the chance to volunteer in another country or work abroad, but until then I look forward to spending my limited vacation time exploring the rest of the world.
Exchange was a wonderful adventure. One that I’m thankful to have had and know I will never forget. And as that chapter of my life comes to a close, I look forward to the exciting adventures that await!
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading what will be my final blog post for a while. For those of you who have stuck with me through all 12 blog posts, congratulations on getting through the 14,000 words, and thanks again for keeping up with my all of my exchange adventures. I hope that somewhere along the 13 countries and 11 languages explored throughout these blogs you learned something new or at least enjoyed reading!
Until the next blog-worthy adventure,
-Pallavi