I had my student exchange in Taylor’s University, close to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The university has three semesters in an academic year, two longer periods and one shorter. The semester I attended was longer one, from April to August. The country itself wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me as I’ve visited there once before in Penang Island. Regardless of knowing what to expect, after getting out from the airport the heat and extreme humidity flabbergasted me – and the realization of the fact that the sticky feeling in my body will remain for the following months. Soon I noticed that luckily all indoor spaces are airconditioned.
Studies at Taylor’s University
The first week was full of orientation classes and events, visa processing and overcoming the jet lag. The second week we had our first classes. Compared to my engineering studies in Finland, the business studies at Taylor’s were quite nicely structured even though they had 80% mandatory attendance. In Finland the lectures are quite long with small breaks (if any), but in Malaysia every course had one shorter lecture and one tutorial in a week. Lectures were in most of the courses quite traditional as we were just listening the lecturer and taking notes. The tutorials then again were more hands on -based and lead by tutors. Every tutorial in every course had tutorial questions for each week of the semester. And usually, those questions were done in groups. As in Finland, also in Malaysia we had individual and group reports, essays and presentations.
I have to admit, the group works really woke me up from my illusion. I was shocked how much AI was used by both students and teachers. For example, in every single tutorial the time given to answer the tutorial questions was so short, that all the group answers were always made by using AI. How can we learn anything if all of it is just copy pasted? And what even is the purpose to pay tuition fees if everything is done with AI? I also don’t really understand how the students are passing the finals as all the exams were done with pen and paper in monitored exam halls without any mobile devices. Maybe that is the reason why everyone was so stressed- and burnt-out during finals weeks and trying to learn everything at once.
Life outside of school
The first weeks I lived in an Airbnb room 15 minutes’ walk away from the campus as I had planned to find a permanent place to stay once I got Malaysia. I had a stroke of luck and I got a small but cozy room with shared kitchen and toilets from the residence at the campus. My roommates were sweet and I was welcomed warmly. One of them even wanted to cook traditional Bengali meal for me as a welcoming gesture.
The mall at the campus, called Syopz, was full of restaurants, food trucks and cafés. People in Malaysia (and later I learned that in other Asian countries as well) love funny drinks. It didn’t take much time for me to also fall in love with them… milk teas, bobas, matchas, all the variations of coffees and teas, the list goes on and on. Due to low prices and hot weather, me and my friends were getting cold drinks for study motivation all the time. Low prices also encouraged us to eat out a lot. In Malaysia, the food culture is cherished and many restaurants and food trucks in the neighborhood are open late. Couple kilometers away from the campus was food garden called Rock Café and it was open 24/7.
Most of the days after school work was done, we just went to hang out somewhere at the campus, gym or eat. If we were feeling bored, we went to see movies, took a Grab to KLCC or Chinatown, went to any of the three closest shopping malls, explored thrift stores or booked a trip somewhere. Kuala Lumpur has a good central location in what comes to travelling other places in Asia. During the exchange I went on mini holidays in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Bandung in Indonesia to meet my classmate from TAMK and her family, and Perhentian Islands in eastern Malaysia. Some of my friends and acquaintances who had less courses (and more money) were travelling almost every week. Also having multiple national holidays during the semester made travelling possible.
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