Events in Laurea in October

October is sure to be an interesting month, not just because everything goes smoothly with my plan about graduation, also due to a number of possibilities open up for grabbing: I might be able to spend Lunar New Year with my mom and get to spend 6 months in an European country that I like, and that’s exciting! Putting it aside, here are a list of events gona happen in October:

– Career fair in Laurea this week: 8-9 October with many companies joining in. There will be talks, workshop to give guidance and present the openings for the students.

– Participating in the project management championship to get credits and.. have fun! You will get to know a lot of things about PM within a short amount of time and if you are in the shortlisted team, Laurea will subsidize you to Poland for the final round.

– Innovation or Die competition by LAMK. Students can form group and get 1000$ if they win!

What perks you got as a student?

Being student is not suckie all the time, they sometimes pity us like the under-privileged kids and give us perks, like the Axure license I got this morning. It saved me about 100 euros per year, which is a pretty good thing for my current situation.

So what else? Actually Finland already did its best to facilitate an ideal learning environment for their students. We have cheap student meals, half-price public transportation cost, subsidized houses. My friend, a Master student at Aalto university, even won a full 7-day-trip to San Francisco after satisfying her Lecturer. Yes, that’s the kind of every teacher definitely should do. But through that you basically know the extent to which a school here is willing to pay for a good student. If I’m not wrong for each graduate, the university receives 30k from the government. With that amount I can start my own business in Finland, no need to go through 2 and a hlaf years of miseries, duhhhhhh.

But anyway, as I’m going to be kicked out of school soon, it’s undeniable that the education system here is extremely advanced compared with the one in my origin country. They say the key to happiness is GRACE, so never in my life I will not be graceful for what I’m having now 🙂

Celebritize yourself

Would you like to be a celerity? Perhaps it’s not everyone’s dream to be in the center of attention but isn’t it fancy to have your name on the news sometimes and have admirers? When I was young, I always fancied to be famous for one day, it should be enough to satisfy my curiosity about the actual life of a rock star, or dinner by American President.

Anyway, what can be the best way to celebrate your fame than having a mobile application to your own? The application is downloadable by your admirers all around the world and it’s entirely about YOU. I prototyped this application a few days ago, imagining how it would be if I was gifted with a Kardashian backside:

The prototype was created easily within just 3 hours, designing from the ground. It should have more functions like sharing on Facebook, to further spread my popularity if it will become a ‘real’ thing some day 😉 I used Axure to design it, known it from the User-centered Design classes last sem. Cool program, definitely something I would recommend to others. The Leppavaara campus has 2 computer rooms equipped with full license of this program: 206 and 207 but you can only use the rooms if there are no classes inside. Anyway, it’s a thing that we got to study this cool thing.

 

Thesis at Laurea UAS

Graduation is a fancy word when you start to think about your thesis work. I’m sure we’d all been there, struggling with the final “obstacle” the separates between us and the graduation gown. As a matter of fact, the graduation rates for students obtaining a bachelor’s degree can stall at as low as 34%.

I started to be serious about getting out of Laurea at the start of August, after a very non-productive summer. In fact I only thought about that as I saw a friend working so hard on it, she was at the local library everyday from 9 till 5, reading the books, taking notes. Looking at her working kinda makes me realize that I need to be back in the track again by focusing all my energy into something that can give me a happy ending with the university and also, a good boost to start my career, again.

It took me about a month to concrete the intention and narrow the research fields, another two weeks to put all the ideas into a proper research proposal. After two months of preparation, on a nice day, just before I left for Paris, my supervisor finally nodded his head and approved the topic. Being a little over-excited, I ran straight to a senior lecturer’s office, Mr. Matvejeff and asked for his opinion. He complemented on my topic and made some suggestions about directions I can further explore, even introduced the director of the case company for me. It turned out he knew the company pretty well and had good connections there, just nice to pave my first steps. Since then, things went on smoothly and I am only awaiting for the first interview on the 1st October.

I feel deeply grateful for being supervised by two senior lecturers, who offered such great guidance on my thesis. Just one last item on the checklist, chiaki Phoebe!!

From Phoebe with ❤

His name is…. Paris

Helsinki was cold when I got back yesterday night, the light vest and cotton scarf couldn’t help me from shivering. The arrival at 1 AM did not make me feel tired at all, rather a bit sentimental about a new lover, named Paris.

I started my trip on the 11th Sept, the initial plan was to have a French taste in my travel diary, and also to satisfy my hunger about its culture and people. I did not expect any surprises, yet he gave me plenty. The pleasure of being with Paris was comfortable, as it arrived so subtly. Before you know it, he already held your hands with a romantic stroll through sunny streets to reach an elegant corner and there, you had no choice but to accept his proposal of eternity. The whole city with every bit of the experiences it gave me, was a state of art. I just can’t help being in love with Paris.

Getting lost with Paris is magical, he introduced you to wonderfully warm and attractive friends. I felt it instantly when I walk through one’s apartment door, and was overwhelmed at the Seine river’s bank during the last two days. The sky told me it was Heritage day on 18th and 19th, before Paris filled me with wine, cheese and music. The white harp lends itself to become a part of the street orchestra, surrounded by Paris and me. I just can’t help being in love with Paris.

Paris, I’ll be back ❤

 

Paris here we come <3

Good preparation huh 😉

Septembreezeeeee

September is definitely an exciting month ❤ Good news keep coming to both Bao and me. Bao started his first job in the last days of August and he was talking non-stop about it, how he excelled at it and the learning opportunities it gave him. And for me, the research proposal that took me one month for preparation started showing good progress. Two of my lecturers at Leppavaara campus fully support it and now I’m more that enthusiastic to get it rolling as soon as possible.

My exploration of digital world keeps my eyes open beyond the possibilities. I’m becoming more and more engaged with the powerful Adobe tools, its Creative suite is interesting in every way. It’s also important that my skills set are practical and useful, and that always bring me a smile to receive a good review or complement from the clients. Here are some Photoshop magic

girl before

girl after

landscape before

landscape ver1

landscape ver2

flower before

flower after

And logo for personal branding

ver 1

ver 2

ver 3

ver 4

Leaving for Paris tomorrow. Thank you Septembreeeee ❤

How to Talk To Your Teacher?

This post is written in preparation of my last semester being a student.

Let’s face it: We get angry at our teachers at times. Some even think that teaching is the easiest career in the world. Sooner or later, we will be on the opposite sides of the road. Knowing that all students will experience this at some time (some more than others, and more often in those middle school years), I have found it effective to create tools that facilitate the teacher-student communication line. Here’s some innovative ways to “talk” to your teacher:

1 The Open-Source Way

Utilizing the power of one thing that you are familiar with the most: social network. Expose your confessions and feelings on a popular social media site like Quora, Facebook groups, Twitter, etc. Don’t forget to mention the teacher and school name so that your subject can easily find the comments/ thinking that are related to him/ her. You can make it more visible by classifying the whole thing using #hashtag like#MsNaomiclassisawasteoftime, #sleepyinMath101, #dyinginshitclass. Be bold and be creative.

Effectiveness Rating: 3/5

2 The Gossiping Way

“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.” said Edward Abbey. True enough, gossip can be entertaining, funny, a tension breaker. Two students gossiping about teacher will feel ostensibly closer, and generate better bonds with each other.

To gossip effectively, create a place to facilitate discussions such as a blog, Facebook page so that all your classmates can join in and offer their perspectives. Only one minus point for this method is some schools block Facebook nowadays and it also takes more effort to write a full blog post when you get home after class, when all the emotions have gone away…

Effectiveness rating: 4/5

3 The Sneaky Way

Nobody likes to be criticized so understand it, teachers do not like to be rated. Some might have very funny negative reactions like this:

http://www.mtvu.com/video/?vid=187975&id=1573981

So the optimum way to let your teachers know about your thinking is to send him/ her an anonymous letter. You can do this by using mobile application Poking Fun or the web services RateMyProfessor.com if you’re studying in America, Canada or United Kingdom. These services guarantee the students’ freedom in voicing their opinions and expressing their emotions towards their professors.

Effectiveness rating: 5/5

No matter what tool you use, one thing to consider is privacy settings, always ask yourself if the comments/ suggestions are sufficiently constructive or simply written out of rage. Also put yourself in your teacher’s shoes before publishing the results and …. have fun in the class

Start of a new semester

So I was wondering what should I write for a start of a new semester, probably the last one of mine at Laurea. Logging in the school website and boom, the whole system was taken down. Some students must be angry 😀

In order to drive the sadness away, this is the fruit of my 5-hour work this morning:

 

Planning to convert it into HTML and make my own webpage <3.

Sunny days’ satisfaction

Happiness is when you eat with pleasure and smile with love ❤