Ho! Ho! Ho!
The yuletide is finally upon us and for me that means a short vacation in Finland to see my girlfriend, family and friends. I am currently in my room and waiting to catch the proper train from Lucerne to Zürich Airport for my evening flight to Finland. After the vacation, or as my local fellow students referred as “study holiday”, I will come back to Switzerland to do the final exams for several courses in January.
Switzerland has been a splendid place to study hard and enjoy life! Weeks have passed by faster than ever in life. Working days I’ve spent studying and writing many several papers, but most of the weekends I’ve just laid back and enjoyed what Switzerland has had to offer me: I have travelled in all of the neighbouring countries (excluding Italy) and exploited the world’s second biggest railway network here in Switzerland to see and experience different cities and mountains.
Studying is taken here very seriously. The grade scale is from 0 to 6, where one would imagine zero to be a fail and six an excellent. Well, actually the grade 3 is already a fail. You need to get a 4 to pass the course (3,5 can be rounded up). In most of the cases, if you fail a course you are very welcomed to come and redo the exam next year. By keeping this in the back of your mind, it pushes you to do more than better. I have learnt a lot of academic publications, how to reference correctly according to APA and rehearsed for multiple different presentations. But hey, that’s why I am here: I wanted to have quality education also from my exchange studies.
I have met a lot of different people from so many countries (at least 25 different nationalities!). Local people are hard-working, but also pulling my leg on an everyday basis, haha. Fantastic people I must say.
I’ve had many visitors from Finland, including my girlfriend Milla, my parents and a couple of friends. With my parents we also drove to Paris to see Milla! What a fantastic weekend we had!
Now it’s time to shut my laptop and focus on my upcoming leisure time in Finland.
See you all soon!
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