Christmas is almost here, which means that it’s also almost time to go back home.
When I started my exchange year in Leeuwarden, I was scared, excited, nervous, happy and I didn’t know what to expect. Now that the time here is almost over, I find myself feeling the same feelings all over again. It’s weird coming back to Finland and leaving all this behind. This has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life, in good and bad, and I’ll miss living here like crazy.
(c) Reetta Aho
As a media student, I ended up in the Stenden University of Applied Sciences to study Media & Entertainment management. I was fairly excited about this also, since my own program focuses mostly on just film and television production. In Stenden, they use PBL and CBL. PBL is Problem Based Learning and CBL is Case Based Learning. I had never used these kind of learning methods in Finland, so it was interesting. 
The picture above basically explains how PBL works. In CBL the only difference is that we work on specific company/organization and try to find solutions for their problems. It was more theory than I was used to, since in my own school we study mostly by doing projects and don’t focus on the theory as much. It was a good experience, but I’m also happy to go back to my own studies. Luckily Stenden is filled with exchange students, so the teachers and other students have patience with me and they take their time with helping and explaining stuff to me.
The groups in school are also much smaller than in Finland, in one PBL/CBL group there can be a maximum of 13 students.
The school has been hard, it’s a lot of work and it takes a lot of my free time here, but still I’ve had the chance to travel around this beautiful country. Of course it’s also the fact that you can travel through the Netherlands in about a day.
(c) Reetta Aho
The only way I know how to put my exchange experience in words is: once in a lifetime experience. And for someone, who is considering doing their exchange year in the Netherlands, I can just say that it would be a great choice.
(c) Reetta Aho
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