Courses at Turku School of Economics

Finally it’s time to tell you about my courses at Turku School of Economics (TSE). One or two years ago, I don’t remember exactly, TSE merged with University of Turku (UTU). This merger makes it possible for students to choose courses from all faculties at UTU. That means that I can choose courses from the economic faculty (TSE) but also from social sciences, medicine, natural sciences, humanities etc. Of course the UvT itself has some limitations within this possibility because it requires a certain amount of credits gained in my own field of studies. However, I am doing all courses here in Turku on top of my regular program in Tilburg so I can choose anything I want! If this would not be possible there would still be many many courses to choose from, but I preferred the other ones.

The semester is divided into two periods. In the first period I have 6 courses. I decided to study for more than half of the credits in de first period, such that I need to work less hard in the second period. The reason is that in the second period there will be a week trip to Lapland and my family will visit me for a week. In the first period I will study for 19 credits. The courses in the first period are the following:

International Negotiations (4 ECTS). This course is about conducting negotiations and is very practical. It is an intensive course which means that they have a lot of lectures during one or two weeks only. This course had three lectures of 2,5 hours during two weeks. After each two lectures we had to write an reflective essay about what you had learned. I think this course is one of the best and most fun during my stay in Turku. In Tilburg we mostly talk about theories and this course is in contrast very practical. It is very nice to actively take part in negotiations with fellow students and to try to get a good result. After each negotiation we had a reflection about the process together with the teacher which was very interesting and I learned a lot.

Finnish for Foreigners (4 ECTS spread over the whole semester). Here we learn the basics of the Finnish lectures. We already learned some greetings and are now learning grammar. For me it was very important to learn some Finnish to be able to understand things in daily life. Moreover, I like learning languages.

Knowledge about Finland (3 ECTS). This is about Finland and the Finnish culture. We have lectures about minorities, geography, demography, religion, education, culture etc. I chose this course because for me it was very interesting to learn more about the country I’m living in and the culture of the people.

Different Perspectives on Entrepreneurship (3 or 6 ECTS). This course is about different kinds of entrepreneurship. After each lecture we have to do a case which consists of answering three questions about a paper combined with the lecture topic. The basic course is 3 ECTS and if you also write the exam you will get 6 ECTS.

Global Environmental Politics and the European Union (5 ECTS). I thought this would be one of the most interesting courses but I have to admit that my expectations were too high. I expected it to be more about the environmental politics itself and the current environmental problems. Instead of that we have had 6 lectures of only background including for example philosophy, politics, European law and European integration in general. Until now there has been no problem solving or thinking about current topics regarding environmental politics itself.

German oral business communication (2 ECTS). The reason to choose this course was to improve my German a little bit. Because there are so many German people in Turku which I hang around with a lot it is a great opportunity to practice and improve my German. The course is only with Finnish students but during the lectures the teacher only speaks German. Because German is similar to Dutch it is quite easy to understand for me.

In general the level of the course is not that high until now and I don’t have too many lectures. Only in the two weeks that I had the course International Negotiations I had a lot of classes but after that only 8 a week of 1,5 hours. Moreover there are not that many assignments that I have to do. For me it is really nice that I have the opportunity to study non-economics course. Although I have realized by now that I really like my field of study and that I’m constantly thinking as an economist, it is good to study different things. You need to study in a different way and it is interesting to learn something about a different topic. The subscription for the courses for the second periods is next Monday and I have many courses I will sign up for. I don’t know yet which I want and will be able to take because many courses have a restricted number of subscriptions. As for many other thins in Turku it is a first come first served base so I have to be quick! (again)