My free time in the Netherlands
In my free time, I explored the area, spent time with my friends and traveled. The best part of the exchange was the carefree daily life. My friends and I went out for coffee a lot, went shopping and just hung out together a lot.
The Netherlands also offered plenty of opportunities for traveling and exploring new places. Cities were easily accessible by train and thanks to its location, traveling around Europe was easy and pretty cheap. During my exchange, I visited places like Spain, Belgium and London.
My studies in the Netherlands
I studies at THUAS, a Dutch university of applied sciences, in social work’s programme. The school’s facilities were modern and designed with students’ needs in mind. We did a lot of group work, prject-based learning and discussions, which created an active learning environment.
Internationality was strongly noticeable in the campus area of the school and in the studies. The classes had students from many different countires, which gave us the opportunity to learn more about other cultures. It was particularly intresting to hear from other international students about what social work is like in their home countries, as well as what the socio-economic situation is like there and what differences we identified.
Comparing studying in The Hague and Finland
Finland and the Netherlands have many similarities when it comes to studying, but there are also some intresting differences. In both countries, students are expected to work pretty independently, but in the Netherlands, students were expected to participate more actively in discussions and share their own opinions.
I also noticed that the Dutch are very direct in their communication. At first, it was bit suprising, especially when talking with teachers, but over time I got used to it and realized that directness is part of openness and honesty, and it is not considered rude.
I also got the impression that education at univeristy of applied sciences is highly valued in the Netherlands. In my opinion, the studies and courses were pretty demanding, but it seemed like students were already used to it there. The difference was that in Finland, assigments are given throughout the course and the workload is spread out over the entire course. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, during the course you were really just expected to attend lectures and listen, there were no other assigments, but the exams and final projects were very extensive and demanding.
All in all, studying in the Netherlands was an extremly important experience for me. It opened up new perspectives for example to life, culture and social work. I will always cherish my time in The Hague and everything I learned there. Dank je wel voor alles, Nederland <3
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