Author: Iida Putkonen

Food Supply

Start your day with a healthy breakfast Scandinavian-style early in the morning, return for lunch where you can choose between salad buffets, super-cheap meal and a bit fancier dishes, and conclude your day with a dinner! When studying in Oulu, you’ll never need to cook anymore.

Also the restaurants have changed lately: In January 2016, Fazer Amica took over most of the restaurants from the all-time-present Uniresta. Luckily, for us consumers there’s not much of a difference, the prices are the same, the restaurants can be found at the same spots, and you can get food from 7:45 onwards.

For the daily lunch-menus, check ruoka.kitchen, you’ll find both providers there!

Stay Connected

You surely know how to find your lecture halls in weboodi, your lecture material in Optima, and books and articles in the online-databases of the library, right?

But did you know there is even an app for our Uni? Tuudo (replaces Aapo) can soon be downloaded for Android and iOS, and it helps you stay on top of your schedule and the room-maze our Uni sometimes seems to be.

Mens sana en copore sano

All this eating and studying calls for some physical counter-balance! When the days get shorter and it’s too slippery outside to run around our beautiful Linnanmaa area, use the Uni’s facilities for staying healthy!

With the sportspass you can enter numerous gyms around the city, participate in classes for free or at low cost, or go swimming in one of Oulu’s pools.

Check out the details here: www.oulunkorkeakoululiikunta.fi or download the sports app (OKKL)!

TellUs Innovation Area

The probably biggest change has taken place in the former library Tellus, which is now the TellUs Innovation Area:  You can book group-work-rooms, hang out in the ‘nest’ for relaxing, have constructive meetings in cute cubicles or a bigger one at the stage. You can find a mentoring service, or become an entrepreneur and be supported by experts who already succeeded in that.

Put your CV to the acid test or connect with companies for your later life already. Check out more info on their webpage, or just pay a visit – there’s another café and hang-out area!

Relax And Chill

If you don’t feel like studying in a quiet room in the library Pegasus, which is also renewed (open till 7 pm on its longest days with an extra area till 9 pm), you could relax in one of the newly invented corners with sofas and armchairs you’ll find all across the campus.

If that’s too busy for you, find your guild’s room – there’s usually sofas, coffee, nice people and some games. Try it!

A newly opened, a bit churchy, quiet room close to L3 offers space for mediation and relaxation – working there is prohibited!

“Jobba” is a rather  elusive animal in general. Finnish Jobba is even more quirky and hard to catch even if you are armed with education, skills, experience and open mind.

Both Finnish and international students might struggle to find work here in Finland, especially the one matching their education. Recently, Minister of Education and Culture Sanni Grahn-Laasonen suggested that university funding should be distributed based on the measure of employment quality as nowadays there are several fields of study that are churning out too many unemployed.

If we speak about foreign students only, numerous graduates from Finland’s international degree programmes offered in English find themselves working as cleaners and dishwashers. According to data released by the country’s Centre for International Mobility (CIMO),  technology graduates have a 2% better than average employment rate, whereas the employment rate of those who had studied business and administration is 5–6% poorer than average. Just over half of foreign graduates stay after graduating from a Finnish university to work.

Let’s face it – with the high cost of living, the limited opportunities to learn the “difficult” language, the small and competitive labour market, the residence permit bureaucracy, chances of getting employed in Finland are rather slim. Thus, it is very important for international students to know this and plan their careers wisely. For example, one of the popular coping strategies of staying in Finland is taking up further studies, including 2nd Master’s or PhD programs.

The growing pool of global talent available for Finnish employers has not been efficiently used yet. Workplace diversity in Finland is advanced when it comes to women and disabled people, but so far there have been few efforts to increase cultural diversity. In a growing number of cases Finnish employers find international graduates either overqualified due to their international experience or irrelevant if the company doesn’t have any international operations.

So, what can you do? First of all, ask questions, investigate the opportunities of building a career in your field in Finland. Be more active and brave in expanding your social and professional networks and contacting employers. Consider entrepreneurship as a way to employment. And try to stay as down to earth as possible. The situation on the Finnish labour market is rather tricky at the moment – don’t put your career off to decide about till the last day of your studies.

Remarkable Flexibility

Examinarium is the new form of taking exams from our very own University of Oulu. The supervision is done with cameras and the dates and hours are flexible. This means you get to choose when to take your exam and in which time slot. You can make a reservation for an exam earliest 30 days before the exam date and latest 7 days before the exam date. The exam times can be 8-12, 12-16, and 16-20. The maximum students allowed per time slot is 24. If you wish to cancel your registration, you have to do it 3 days in advance.

Just A Few Steps And You’re In

Step 1: Agree with your teacher. Step 2: Register to the exam. Step 3: ???. Step 4: Profit. Alright,  maybe I skipped a step or two. Nevertheless, the registration is indeed done in the Optima environment and you must have an agreement with your teacher about it.

Examinarium Room Is Located In Linnanmaa

The room where the magic happens is on Linnanmaa campus, in room TL 102 in the corridor Fysiikankatu. This corridor is found between TellUs and Central Station, near the green coatracks. Can’t miss it!

Examinarium Also Takes A Summer Holiday

The Examinarium is closed during summer between July 4th and August 8th. So be sure to take this into account when planning your exams.

Save The Trees!

At the moment, exams in Examinarium are still paper-based. However, in the near future, examinations will be done electronically as so-called e-exams. This will hopefully mean less strain for your wrist while answering all the questions from your exam.

Networking never goes out of trend

If you want to be on the loop of what’s happening, you can always rely on the power of social media and your contacts. Someone will always know what’s going on, or at least know someone who knows what events are cooking up. Keep those eyes peeled and those ears perked and you won’t miss any of the summer happenings.

Let your inner grill master (grillimaisteri) shine!

Nothing quite says summer like being outside with only shorts and t-shirt grilling some goodies. Experiment different things! Stuffed mushrooms and paprikas are a personal favourite. If you are more into the eating than the preparing, you can get some sandwiches and beverages in a basket and go to any of the green areas in for example Linnanmaa or the city center and have a nice picnic. Just remember to pick up after yourself; we gotta keep those greens green.

Water in Oulu is more fun when it’s not frozen

Change those winter tires on your best friend (your bike), and take a trip to Nallikari. The beach will surely be full of nice and interesting people sunbathing, playing volleyball, throwing flying discs, or simply chilling in the water. Just because it’s Oulu doesn’t mean the sun cannot burn you, so keep some sunscreen handy to keep your enjoyment devoid of pesky sunburns.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Wait… No. Forget about the player, it’s all about the game! Our pal, the yellow ball of fire in the sky brings us endless possibilities to play outside. You can play football, tennis, rugby, and why not, also the Finnish throwing game mölkky.

Be spontaneous!

Grill, play, run, love! Maybe today you feel like going for a walk, maybe tomorrow you have an itch for volleyball. Perhaps the next day you want to go to that new pop-up bar. Or maybe you want to do it all at once! The possibilities are endless. Do everything that your heart desires (and try to do it responsibly). Maybe you can ask out that cute boy or girl that you have had a crush on for a while. Set your potential free and live summer in a way that next year you will be looking forward to it again.