Studying as an international student at ramk

While entering in this big, clean and modern campus that’s called Ramtavitika the first impression you get is that the facilities offer the best environment as possible to the students.

This impression is then confirmed when you get to know the facilities and services proposed to the students (the cafeteria, sport room, library...) but also, and especially, when meeting the teachers and the administration staff.

Indeed, if you are worried about the fact that this big and clean campus could be a good place to work but may be quite cold and impersonal. Then the welcome, friendliness and the ramtavitika staff’s desire to be helpful will reassure you.

Then, when attending your first class, you rapidly understand how your experience abroad could be summarized: an intercultural experience. And to be honest, however studious Erasmus people may be (and for sure we are!), first of all the Exchange student experience, is a human one. And what other human experience could be more enriching that an intercultural one?Thus, the classroom will quickly plunge you into this context: your courageous new finish teacher gives class to students from around ten different countries. And, even if one can’t deny the genuine interaction we have with the finish culture (the emphasizes finish teacher put on punctuality, their more relax relationships they have with their pupils, but also, more trivial but unless interesting their monotonous and sometimes quite tiring tone), the more relevant intercultural relationship in class seems to be the one with others student. It is all the more true that we are asked to practice in small group in the PBL method, a teaching method that implies common work and free sharing of ideas and opinions about a compulsory subject.

However, the relationships one has with other exchange students are not limited in the strict work environment. In fact, being an exchange student in Rovaniemi also often means living in a place dedicated to exchange students: our daily and private life with roommates from sometimes four different countries. Here it is thus all about learning about the others but also about oneself, about putting into practice and improving our intercultural skills, but also, and above all, striking up friendship and creating strong tips with people who are finally not that different…

We can say that being an exchange student in RAMK is a great and enriching experience.

Jens De Backer
Coline Podlunsek