Category Archives: Aalto Experience

student experience in Aalto.

Writing Master’s thesis at Aalto University

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As you may already know, thesis is an obligatory part of your degree and every student has to do it at some point of their studies.  I felt intrigued when I got to know that the majority of students in Finland write their theses as a practical case studies for different companies. It means that a company has a problem to solve or theory to be tested and they give this job to a student. In this way, companies get solutions for their problems without need to hire a person specifically for that task and student get to apply their knowledge in real work-life case already before graduation + possibly make some money.

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A walk by the seaside in Helsinki

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A beautiful and peaceful sunset moment by the bay in eastern Helsinki.

Before I moved to Finland, I had lived in Tamsui for almost 10 years, which’s situated next to an estuary in the northern Taiwan, the most famous sightseeing spot for the sunset. One thing I knew before I left Tamsui for Hesinki was that I would miss a lot taking a walk by the water.

The sunset in Tamsui, Taiwan.

After I settled in Helsinki and soon discovered that I lives in a quiet neighborhood with only a 15-min walking distance to an estuary. Coincidently, that’s exactly the same distance from my house to the estuary in Taipei. The scenery and the sound of running water are the greatest cure to my homesickness.

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Where The Wild Things Are?

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Örö Island Workshop 2019 (Course:  DOM-E3042)

You leave behind Helsinki and the metro stations, the bus stops and highways, the train station in Salo and the harbor in Kasnäs.  You try to count the black rocks rising from sea in this maze of islets, while another grey wave mirrors another grey sky. On a Monday in October you arrive on an island called Örö at the edge of the Finnish archipelago where the Baltic Sea swallows the horizon. The equipment in your backpack outweighs your food supplies by far and you carry more films than underpants as you start the walk to your cottage with the other lens based creatures that will be your roommates for the next five days and your partners in crime for the next two years.

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Attending Barcelona Convention with a support from Aalto Design Grants

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European Blockchain Convention 2020 in Barcelona.

With the support from Department of Design Grants, I had the chance to attend the European Blockchain Convention for the first time last week. The grants are offered 4 times every year to “facilitate research, art, creative practice and learning dealing with design. Priority is given to enable participation to peer reviewed research and artistic events and forums for publishing the outcomes.” (Aalto website)

I applied for the Department of Design Grants in mid August to gain new information for my master thesis. One month after my application, I received a notification that I was granted an amount of 700 euros from Department of Design Express Grant. Two weeks later, I receive the full amount to cover the convention registration fee, accommodation, flights and other expenses. The grant eased my financial burden to attend an important convention outside of Finland. Usually, the registration fee of international seminars and conventions cost quite a lot. This one costs 238 euros, which is a big amount for students. I am really grateful to have the grant to advance my research on my master thesis.

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A challenging yet rewarding year comes to a conclusion

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They say endings are not a time to grieve, but to be glad that the stories happened. This describes the way I feel as the year and with it, the decade comes to a close. It has been an eventful year which brought many challenges when it started and now that it’s ending, there are new challenges to carry forward into the next year and decade. However, I keep my head up and look forward with renewed hope and energy. Many of the experiences I got to live through in this year resulted as being a part of the Aalto University, which fills me with gratitude for being a student in this university.

When the year started, I was struggling within a global team as part of the course, ME310 – Global Innovation Program at Aalto University, which was also my minor. The struggle was to come up with our proof-of-concept prototype for the water infrastructure optimization project that we had been working on in the course. Since the scope of our project was based in China, and half of our team members were from China, we visited China earlier in the year to validate some of our concepts with the users and gather insights to incorporate them further into our concept. The interviews and user testing we conducted in China was vital for the development of our final concept.

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Interview with ayy – Aalto Student Union

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AYY (Aalto-yliopiston ylioppilaskunta) is Aalto University’s Student Union, which represents around 14000 students. In the interview, Tapio Hautamäki (Chair of the Borad) and Rosa Väisänen (Specialist of international affairs and sustainability) introduce AYY about its services for student members, major events every year, supports for new Aalto students and so on.

AYY’s goal is to enable the best student’s life in the world for its members by promoting wellbeing and developing the teaching at Aalto University.

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Would you like to attend a student sitsit? A seated dinner with a lot of singing and drinking!

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Sitsit for 7 Polytechnic choirs from all over Finland, in Otaniemi campus

What is a student sitsit in Finland? It is a seated dinner at a long table, usually inside the campus, organized by student organizations. It is very popular in Finland, at least in Aalto University. I have already attended 3 sitsits in Aalto University so far. It is similar to the high table dinner, but in a Nordic way.

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A super-intense yet interesting course

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This past month I was involved in a mandatory course as part of my major in Strategy & Venturing. The course was called Advanced Case Seminar in Strategy and if I had any doubts about the intensity the course would require, they were cleared during the first introductory session. The Assistant Professor Timo Vuori didn’t hold back while describing what was to come for us (the course participants) in the coming weeks, and mentioning it as a lot of PAIN.

The course was structured in a way that we had company cases each week, for one month, with a break of one week after the second or third week, depending upon which group you were in. The cases were related to real challenges and the students were divided into teams to work on solving the cases and presenting the solutions in front of the consulting companies as a group. Within these cases were some that had been going on for months but as part of the course, we were expected to come up with a well-thought analyzes and well-structured solution for the concerned company within a week. This made the course super intense but at the same time, it was quite exciting to work in teams to come up with solutions for the problems as well. Moreover, the course also had individual assignments related to the same cases where the structure was a little different then the group ones but essentially the idea was that all the students would contribute in the group cases if they had done the individual assignments beforehand.

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