University of Helsinki
The day I got the email letting me know I was accepted at the Ethnic Relations, Cultural Diversity and Integration Master’s programme (ERI) was one of the happiest days of my life. Soon however, anxiety about a new move in my life kicked in. Four years earlier I had made my first move when I left Albania to pursue my Bachelor studies at the University of Malta. I loved to travel and experience new things, but the move to the North was going to be a different one.
Everyone kept on telling me about how different Finland was from the warm Maltese islands; how cold and unfriendly the Finnish people seemed; how difficult it was going to be for me to make friends and to feel part of a community there; how dark my first months in Finland would be, both regarding the sunlight and my mood. The only truths in all those things I heard during two months before flying off to Finland were the ones regarding the weather. YES it was a lot colder than the warm Mediterranean and YES you don’t see the sun that much in November and December. But the weather conditions have nothing to do with people in Finland or at the University of Helsinki.
You tend to hear that Finnish people are as cold as the weather or that they don’t socialise. My experience these two years at the University of Helsinki has been quite the contrary, and I’ve found it rather amusing to share my experiences with the people who had been “scaring” me about Finland and Helsinki. During my first hours in Helsinki, the ERI coordinator had organized our first get-together with the other students and some of the academic staff who teach in the programme. The warm welcoming by the staff of my Master’s programme was not the only thing which has made me love the University of Helsinki and the Swedish School of Social Sciences (Soc&Kom), the unit that is responsible for coordinating the programme. From the very start, I felt I was becoming part of a community – more specifically, an academic community.
Having reflected quite a bit on this, I attribute this feeling to the central position of research at the University of Helsinki. Research characterizes the academic community, making it welcoming to students and staff. The building of Soc&Kom is not a big one but in all the floors you will find offices with researchers working on their projects. In this unit alone there are two research centres, FO-RUM and CEREN. The ERI programme is a part of the latter. Students and staff alike meet in the ground floor in the university cafeteria that serves lunch.
The feeling of being part of a community is however not something I attach to Soc&Kom specifically but it follows me to every building at the University of Helsinki, be it faculties, departments, libraries or learning centres. Before starting this Master’s I had never thought I would continue with academic research as my career. Thanks to having experienced what it means to do academic research, I have now placed it as part of my plan for the future.
At the moment I am writing my thesis in order to complete the programme. The system here gives a lot of freedom to students and expects a lot of independence of them. However, if you come from a university where, as a student, you don’t have many choices the freedom and independence may feel difficult in the first months of the studies.
The research seminars at Soc&Kom and a direct contact to researchers and academics have enabled me to build a vast network to help me complete my thesis research. I also use these networks to help me in the job hunting process. (The cost of living in Finland is very high and, as a student, you are bound to feel it.) Contrary to what you may hear about Finnish people being individualistic and not very comfortable around other people, at the University of Helsinki you will find a community which is warm, friendly and supportive for everyone.
Olsi Dudumi
Photo: Mats Engblom