Update about school
Right now I am taking four classes, about 11,5 hp total (15 hp was what I aimed for so my second half of the fall will be heavier). These four classes only resulted in five lectures per week. It is really nothing compared to what I am used to. In Linköping it is normal to be scheduled from 8 am to 5pm. I think I will have to study a bit more on my own, maybe pick up a course book and actually read it. So far I am enjoying my free time though ;) I ride the bus to school, go to my only class of the day, check the lunch menus on my recently downloaded campus lunch app, eat where they offer the best lunch and take the bus back to Helsinki again.
This is what I am taking:
- Introduction to wood properties and wood products, 3 hp
Aalto University has a whole department dedicated to forrest production so this course only touches the surface. So far it is very interesting. Wood might seem like a pretty low tech material when it is actually quite high tech. Today in class we talked about how wood can be used as insulation and thereby regulate the moisture level in a room and decrease cost for heating. This class might be a bit more theoretical that the one I would have taken in Linköping and it only corresponds to half of the credits so I might take a continuing course in the spring. - Knowledge and competence management, 3 hp
This is a type of management course about information and how we share it with other people. The lectures would be more interesting if the professor was not talking with such a monotone voice. Finnish is a language without intonation which sometimes reflect also when a Finnish person is speaking English. Something new to me with this course are "learning diaries". They are a short reflective essay with a theme that you write inbetween the lectures, in other Words, once a week. I think it is a pretty clever way to force us students so grasp the content. - Opportunity prototyping, 3 hp
I am not sure what this course really is about yet. It is supposed to be a management course but it feels more like something else. There has just been one lecture and I think that the only aim the lecturer had for the first lecture was to inspire us. He was mainly telling anecdots and saying things like "think outside the box" and "think like designers". There is going to be a project where we are supposed to develop the Finnish "baby box". - Project development Project (PDP) 10 hp
This is the only class I have that will last for a whole year. Everyone calls it PDP and it is supposed to be a pretty intense product development course. The resources for this course are impressive. The 100 or so participating students from different departments and countries will be divided into groups of 10. Each group will be working towards a company and have a budget of 10000 EUR. To our help there is a big crew of faculty and tutors and a building called the Design Factory. The Design Factory is this creative space with a stage, work spaces, small rooms for meetings, a room designated for Skype meetings, a knitting studio, a full kitchen where you can cook dinner with your group and then in the basement there is all kinds of tools and euipment for building stuff. The prototypes in this course have the chance to become awsome. I have to post pictures from this place!!
