Day 132 And that's a wrap!

wOOOHOOoooo~

Judging by my crazy typing and my choice of word, you will know that I have currently finished ALL the exams, ALL the assignments, EVERYTHING related to school work here in Helsinki.

That feels SOOOO good!

And now, after my mind is not preoccupied with exams and studies, an overwhelming feeling of sadness came to me. AWWW.. I am going to leave Helsinki in less than 4 days.

I leave on 23rd for Budapest, then to Bratislava, to visit Barbora's home-town, then to Vienna. I am very very excited about this trip, because it will be my last trip in Europe in my exchange.

In a way, I am quite proud of myself preferring to visit Eastern/ Central European countries than to most of the tourist-overwhelmed mainstream places, like the ever-so-popular Paris or Milan.

And I am looking forward to seeing Barbora's home-town! Must be interesting seeing how she was brought up, the place, her home and everything!

I suppose I should have written a more organized entry on my very last day of exam here in Helsinki, but my mind is racing with excitement, happiness and sadness right now, my fingers cannot keep up with it, and so I am writing broken paragraphs, I know that they don't connect, but my head is thinking so fast.

Day 131 My last day of studying!

Today marks the day before my very last exam here in Helsinki. Feels pretty good, except for the fact that I am a little bit stressed what is going to be on the exam.

I am thinking if I should bring all my notes and stuff back home. It will be heavy, but I think I would want to flip through them in case I need to look for something. Good thing I didn't buy any heavy hard-covered dictionary-thick textbooks.

Hm.. decision decision.

Studying was good today. I went to school because it was extremely hard to concentrate in my room, argh, actually just get me away from my computer and I am not distracted. Still, I can't ask people to hide it, so I had to go to school to get away from it. LAME...

I have been making a list of "exit" procedures I need to do before I go back home:
(1) return room key, collect deposit
(2) Mail some of my clothes in case of suitcase overload
(3) return keycard to school, if not, I cannot get my transcript
(4) close Nordea bank account, get all the money out

and pack for home and Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna!

Day 130 Helsinki's weather

No more complaining that weather is cold here in Helsinki.



Today's weather is 21 degrees Celsius, and you wouldn't believe how warm it is. I can easily go out without wearing long sleeves, and still feel a bit warm in it! Happy to say, my arms are getting a tiny bit tanned! I'm dedicated to making them darker before I go back to HK.



Oh, and I discovered that there is a fountain in our school, and it actually works!

Day 123 WHY? WHY? WHY?

Studying in Aalto School of Economics is very enjoyable, classes are good, some professors are great, I learn a lot.

BUT one extremely frustrating thing about classes here is, the professors and teaching assistants don't give out softcopy/ hardcopy of answer keys to exercise sets.

True, they have a problem set solution session, but this is extremely frustrating and inefficient. I will explain why.

1. My aim of going to all lectures and I will say, problem set solution sessions, is to listen to what the teacher has to say, any additional information or explanations to problem sets that I don't know how to do. But, without softcopy or hardcopy of the answer key, everyone in the room was copying and copying and copying from the powerpoint, and I don't know about other people, but I cannot concentrate on what the teacher is saying.

2. What if you cannot attend the problem set solution session? You are forcing people to attend classes just to copy answers from your powerpoint and not listening to you. You might as well put a janitor there and click through the powerpoint for the entire lecture room to copy.

3. The problem with these problem set solution session is, some questions are extremely easy and you already know the answer, and you just don't want to sit there and listen to things you already know of, isn't this completely inefficient learning? True, you may make mistakes on "easy questions", but why can't you discover it by looking at the answer key yourself? Sometimes, I go into these classes, just to spend almost 1 and a half hour there, waiting for that one question I am not sure of, then spending my time copying the solution instead of listening to the lecturer. GOSH.. comeon, this is 2010, ever heard of the power of computers?

I have to say, I am very disappointed with this arrangement.

I guess that they don't want to "distribute" the answer because they are afraid we might "spread it out". I have to say, if we intend to "spread the answer out", we will do it, no matter you have the softcopy or hardcopy of answer key or not.

Oh, and guess what I did in those exercise solution sessions?


I took freaking photos of the powerpoint, so I can concentrate on listening to the lecturer. Geez ... Come on, Aalto School of Economics, this is 2010!

Here is what I propose. Cancel those exercise solution sessions, distribute answer key online, and organize consultation sessions. If we don't understand after reading the answer key, we will go find the profs or teaching assistant.

Ain't this efficient and 21st century learning?

Day 122 Technically Helsinki School of Economics doesn't exist anymore

I meant to write this post earlier, but I kept forgetting and forgetting it.

From the beginning of this semester, my exchange school, Helsinki School of Economics, doesn't exist anymore, it is now part of a bigger university, called the Aalto University, and we become one of the schools.

Helsinki School of Economics now becomes Aalto School of Economics

The "logo" of Aalto University is quite interesting, it's a capital letter "A" with an exclamation mark.



It's almost like "lookout (Exclamation mark), it's Aalto University", and because there are double As in the word "Aalto", they had to use a CAPITAL LETTER A. When I first saw this "logo", I thought it was extremely similar to Yahoo!

LOOKOUT! IT's AALTO UNIVERSITY!

Day 118 My first exam of this month - DONE!

Phew! Done! My first exam of this month- Derivatives and Risk Management Exam- DONE!

I am really quite happy that I have finished this exam, and I am quite satisfied with what I know and the paper.

The paper was really really long though, it was from 9 am to 1 pm, and I almost used up the entire 4 hours to complete the exam, it was LONG! I nearly fell asleep in the middle of the exam, because it was soo long...

I think the exam itself is not difficult, but it's just really tedious, lots of things to calculate, drawing binomial trees.

Now in about a week, I have my corporate risk management exam and after that my advanced corporate exam.

Day 117 Back to studies

After all the celebrations, it was time to go back to studying.

I have exams this Tuesday, my Derivatives and Risk management exam. I am quite nervous really, because I don't know what to expect in the exam. I suppose most questions are similar to that of the exercise sets, but not really sure.

I find it quite interesting studying this course, and I learnt the most out of this course. The teacher, Professor Matti Suominen, is great. You can understand what he is saying, when you sit in the front of the class and he doesn't mumble. The guest lecture was a disaster though, I think the guest lecturer is great in what he does, but he doesn't quite know how to teach the class. He was talking about commodity derivatives, and I swear, I wanted to shoot myself in that lecture.

"If I had one hour to live, I would spend it in this guest lecture class, because it feels like forever."

But still, I learnt quite a lot from the teacher.

Okay, back to my studies.

Day 114 Last day of class!

Today is the last day of class. Mixed feelings...

I want this day to come, because that means that I am officially done with my 2nd year of study, so only 1 year left for my bachelor degree, and then I am gone forever from school (until I get another degree to prove to my colleagues that I am smart, educated and intelligent).

Also, I am very glad because this means all the courses are done, and all the assignments and case write-ups are DONE! The case write-ups are actually harder than those in HKUST. I mean, for BMGB 201 in HKUST (which we have 4 professors), the case write-ups are quite qualitative, not much analyzing the balance sheet and such, just apply whatever strategic models, and there you have your nice write-up. But for the cases here, you actually have to calculate a lot, so I guess the approach is quite different and I do learn a lot from them. But man, they're tough! So glad that they are done!

I am quite sad at the same time, because this means it is near the end of my exchange. All things come to an end.

Oh and today is Vappu! End of April, before May 1st! And you know the Finns, that calls for celebration = alcohol consumption = HUGE amount of alcohol consumption!!!

Day 110 Last week of school!

This week has finally come, it's the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL!

Finally, all the lectures are coming to an end, my corporate risk management class, my derivatives and risk management class and my advanced corporate finance class, all ending this week.

I cannot find words to describe how happy I am, for these classes to end, not that I don't like the class, but for some reason, I don't quite understand what the teacher is saying, maybe their accent is a bit heavy. But still, I enjoyed the content of the class!

But before this week ends, I have 3 homework assignment due. A derivative and risk management case write-up on Avon, then a Corporate risk management exercise 2 (requires a lot of work), and the advanced corporate finance exercise.

Yep.. back to homework and studies...

Day 99 Last Finnish class finished!

I have mixed feelings in my last Finnish class today. Part of me really want this day to come because I don't particularly like studying a new language, but then another part of me doesn't want this day to come, because that would mean, my exchange is approaching its end and it's nearly time for me to get my ass out of Helsinki.

Barbora and I did our presentation on Finnish music festival today, we used extensively the almighty wikipedia and showed the class some video clips of the music festival from the amazing youtube website. I think we did well, at least it seemed like we have prepared something to say in front of the class!

We got back our exam paper, I passed! YES! 41 was the passing score, and the score I was expecting actually, but turned out I did okay, and didn't get a marginal pass. I am so happy about it!

Merja and Christina then started to give out class prizes.

Shane, for breaking his leg and not complaining about it- he got the Sisu award and got Sisu gums as a prize.


Rahel, for being the smiling girl in the class!


Andy and I celebrating! WOOHOOO we passed! Andy took the exam early, and told me lots of tips for the exam! I think that's because he doesn't want me to fail the course and having everyone to think that HKUST is a crappy school.


Me and my ... ASIAN PRIDE.

Me and the teachers, Merja and Christina.

I was talking to Larry back from school today and he told me that he is leaving in early May. And some exchangers here are leaving really really soon, some have 3 weeks left here. So far, I don't have that much of an intense feeling yet, because I still have 2 case write-ups and 2 assignments due by the end of this month. And then exams till May 20th.

As for my studies, I have passed my investment management and Finnish courses. Two down, 3 more to go!