Oh Blog.

It’s been HOW long since I last wrote..?!? Wow.

When I started this blog my plan was to write once a week, perhaps every Friday morning. A nice idea – but when ‘the going got tough’ I could not keep it up. Instead of reflecting my experiences on internationalisation I have been experiencing a lot – in a way doing ‘field research’ on internationalisation. But, since the New Year is here, my resolution is to catch up with writing this blog and indeed write once a week.

This year kicked off with the new exchange students arriving to Finland. It is amazing how you can sometimes tell a person’s nationality by the way they look. Not everyone’s naturally, but the Polish girls looked Polish and the American girls looked American, and the Brit – he definitely looked British. Everyone seemed to have an open mind and be exited about being here. It is easy to please the ones that come with low – or reasonable – expectations and a sense of adventure, the ones that are not too fussy, do not mind waiting for a bit and are genuinely thankful for the help they receive. That’s when it’s also nice to provide help and advice. The expectations are of course largely dependant on personality, previous experiences etc. but I believe a lot of the expectations are formed during the period before the exchange, when students surf the internet, talk to other students, read books on culture.. well, maybe just surf the internet, chat to other students and read discussion forums, blogs and facebook pages.

So is it possible to influence the expectations a student has about his / hers exchange in Finland? At least we are trying. Totally not in a ‘big broterish’ way though! No, it’s more about trying to give the arriving foreign students a truthful picture of what to expect of and in Finland, and about giving advice, explaining cultural issues etc. We are using an e-learning workspace with different kinds of documents and pages, and discussion forums to do this. And we are involving the current and former students in it too. Sounds good, eh? Well, it is good – but could also be better, more active and talkative. But it’s not always about cultural differences related to nationality, nor differences in language skills, but cultural differences in using virtual tools, the internet and chat/discussion forums. And all that is whole other story..