Life is fine in Jyväskylä: running trails are terrific, tap water is unbelievably clean and tasty, the city is lively, youthful and diverse, people are nice, weather has been quite warm, even university cafeteria food is decent, after two weeks of quite tiresome walking I finally got myself a bike which means that I do not have to take a single step from now on and today I even received the long awaited cargo. Yippee!

Since the beginning of the last week I’ve mainly been busy with various orientation courses at the university which have helped me with getting to know how Finnish educational system in general and the university in particular work. And I have to say that almost everything runs smoothly here. One of the major differences between the Slovene (which I’ve got to know down to absurd details over the years) and Finnish school systems is that in Finland the purpose of administration is to actually make things work as efficiently as possible, whereas in Slovenia they tend to complicate even the simplest tasks and thus just frustrate people. Here university employees at least know what their responsibilities are and are even eager to help.

Based on the lectures I’ve had so far, it also looks like I will be enjoying my studies here a great deal. The lectures so far have been quite lively. One thing that I really enjoy is that a lot of time so far has been dedicated to group discussions. And attendees come from so many different cultural and professional environments that it is really interesting to listen to what they have to say. And on top of that the variety of courses at the university is absolutely enormous: from The Cultural History of Western Madness to Accelerator Based Condensed Matter Physics. I also really appreciate the fact that all classes are public, although a great majority of lectures are delivered in Finnish, so I’ll have to stick to English ones for now, but will hopefully be able to actively attend some of them next year.

In Finland the school year is divided into two terms and each term is divided into two periods plus a fifth period which takes place during the summer months. Which means that courses usually begin at the beginning of each period, last a few weeks and then there is an exam week before the next period begins. So you’re really not stuck to one and the same lecturer and subject throughout the whole year and are thus exposed to loads of variety. And on top of that I was told that at least in programme that I attend students can expect loads of guest lecturers, artists and business people. All this means that I will be exposed to a wide variety of subjects and will hopefully even develop new interests.

Just for the taste of what I’ll be doing in the first two periods, here’s a list of my courses: Theories of Digital Culture, Digital Art and Culture, Documentarism, Man and Information System, Cultural Theory, Analyzing and Interpreting Visual and Textual Materials, Forays into Nordic Archeology, Research Communication and, guess what, Suomi Yksi. That’s a list as of today, but since their system is really flexible, you can register and unregister from all courses whenever you feel like it and you can take exams as many times as you want. So hey, I’ll probably be sampling a whole bunch and then just attend those that I really like. The only problem might be that there are so many to choose from that good ones can be easily overlooked.

Another thing that I really appreciate at the university is how well the computer system is organized. Not only did they set up Internet connection in my room only two hours after I have applied for it, but computers are spread throughout the campus. You can login with the same user/pass combination on all of them and can access your private folder on the server which can also be accessed via net. And each student also get 50 MB on a web server, naturally. There are also quite a few wi-fi areas on the campus, but I am yet to check that out, since I do not yet have a wi-fi card for my computer (but I’ve heard that those can be borrowed from the university). Another neat thing is that materials for all core lectures that I’m taking are available after the lecture on a system called Optima. Which basically means all presentations, related readings lists, links to interesting materials on the web and discussion forums. All information is extremely easily accessible to students of the courses. I’ve been waiting for something like that for years and it probably won’t happen anytime soon either.

So far the only truly unpractical thing is the access to the main library which is open only during weekdays and for a short time during the weekend. I’d expect that at least the main library would stay open 24 hrs a day, but I guess that has a lot to do with Finnish work morale: it seems they work a lot, but within reasonable limits which means that free time is an important and respected asset of every Finn. But practically anything regarding Finnish work culture and attitude is still out there for me to explore, so I cannot really say much about it just yet.

Lots of interesting things have been going on around here, but each day only has 24 hours which means that so far I couldn’t really find much time to set up the image gallery. Now, I am finally working on it, so you can expect to see some images from Jyväskylä soon.

Anyways, Uroš thanks for the comments. Keep it up, because it is cool to hear from you. And this can also serve as an invitation to others: let me know what you’ve been up to. If you don’t feel like posting a comment, than just drop me an email and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2005 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Culture, Education, Finland, Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.