Work­ing hard to pur­sue the dreams: Polina’s sto­ry of appre­ci­a­tion

Polina’s jour­ney in Fin­land did not start in Oulu, but she is hap­py that it led her there. She is now pur­su­ing a degree in Tourism and dreams of doing impact­ful work at the city ser­vices.

Jour­ney to Oulu

My name is Poli­na, and I arrived in Fin­land from Rus­sia 2.5 years ago to study tourism at Kajaani Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences. Before com­ing to Fin­land, my pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney was – and to an extent, still is – all over the place. I stud­ied Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy at a uni­ver­si­ty in Rus­sia, worked on man­ag­ing trans­la­tions of dig­i­tal prod­ucts and typog­ra­phy, and did a bit of work in dif­fer­ent areas of the tourism indus­try. I dreamt of mov­ing to a Nordic coun­try for years before I got the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do it and end­ed up in Fin­land in 2021.

When I arrived in Kajaani, I was look­ing for any employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty to cov­er my liv­ing expens­es. I asked every­where – at the career cen­tre at my uni, at the recruit­ment agen­cies, sent CVs, etc. My friend who was work­ing at the restau­rant rec­om­mend­ed me to her man­ag­er, and even­tu­al­ly, I end­ed up sign­ing an employ­ment con­tract there.

My work hours slow­ly grew, and I end­ed up work­ing quite a bit of hours as a wait­ress. How­ev­er, I want­ed to move to a place with more job oppor­tu­ni­ties and to grow career-wise, espe­cial­ly once my hus­band moved to Fin­land too, so I applied for work in Kuo­pio and Oulu. I got a job offer as a shift man­ag­er in a restau­rant in Oulu and moved here in Sep­tem­ber 2023.

First impres­sions

Oulu imme­di­ate­ly gave me a very pos­i­tive impres­sion. I felt like I was not turn­ing heads any­more when I was speak­ing my lan­guage on the streets, peo­ple had no prob­lem com­mu­ni­cat­ing in Eng­lish, there were many stores and ser­vices, and the neigh­bours were friend­ly. In the end, our rela­tion­ship with one of the neigh­bours grew so much that she gave us a home­made cake for Christ­mas.

The streets in Oulu are very clean, and there is a lot of green­ery (even in win­ter­time!) once you get a lit­tle bit out of the city cen­tre. I love the pine forests in Fin­land: they are well tak­en care of, pure, and rich in berries and mush­rooms for pick­ing in the sum­mer. I admire how well the roads are main­tained in win­ter, and how clean the snow here is. There are all kinds of help avail­able for dif­fer­ent life sit­u­a­tions, and you need only ask for it.

What about the lan­guage and cul­ture?

Speak­ing the Finnish lan­guage is impor­tant in Fin­land in gen­er­al if you want to become a part of Finnish soci­ety. I start­ed learn­ing Finnish right as I got my admis­sion let­ter, but I could only intro­duce myself when I arrived in Fin­land. Luck­i­ly, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to study with a pri­vate lan­guage teacher from Rus­sia.

I was moti­vat­ed by my university’s pos­si­bil­i­ty of study­ing tuition-free for a year if I passed an inter­me­di­ate YKI test and pro­gressed in my stud­ies accord­ing to plan. I had lan­guage lessons 1–3 times a week, stud­ied Finnish on my own almost dai­ly, and prac­ticed it at work. Hav­ing stud­ied Finnish for 1.5 years, I passed the YKI test (Nation­al Cer­tifi­cate of Lan­guage Pro­fi­cien­cy) in Novem­ber 2022. These days, I speak more Finnish than Eng­lish dai­ly.

Finnish is not an easy lan­guage, but the good thing is that Finns do not make fun of peo­ple who attempt to learn it and are very sup­port­ive. You will need to ask them to cor­rect your mis­takes because, in my expe­ri­ence, most Finns will not do that out of fear of dis­cour­ag­ing you. It is a fas­ci­nat­ing jour­ney: to see how your mind adapts to an entire­ly new way of think­ing, and how you grad­u­al­ly start under­stand­ing more and more.

I appre­ci­ate the val­ues that Finnish soci­ety has. There is a strong empha­sis on trust and empow­er­ing peo­ple to be inde­pen­dent and advo­cate for them­selves. I like that Finns are glad to help, but they will not jump in to assist you right away unless you are real­ly in need. You can always say your opin­ion freely, and you can expect peo­ple to hear you out in full and gen­uine­ly con­sid­er it. I have grown to be more open-mind­ed and learnt to voice my opin­ions.

An intern at IH Oulu

Now, I am doing the final intern­ship of my stud­ies at Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu. I quit my job to focus on my stud­ies and to build a net­work in the city ser­vices. I had want­ed to be employed in city ser­vices for a long time.

In Fin­land, such work can affect people’s lives for the bet­ter, which is impor­tant for me. As an intern at IH Oulu, I do a vari­ety of tasks: I help to plan and imple­ment events, I write social media posts, I assist with project tasks, and I pro­vide guid­ance. Many peo­ple come here with urgent or seri­ous mat­ters, and it is impor­tant to be sen­si­tive and infor­ma­tive and to lis­ten more than speak.

I like that Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu leads by exam­ple: it employs for­eign-born res­i­dents of Oulu and allows them to prac­tice Finnish. I could choose my tasks here, which was great because it allowed me to test my skills and knowl­edge in areas that I was inter­est­ed in. I felt incred­i­bly wel­come here.

”The impor­tance of net­work­ing in Fin­land can­not be over­stat­ed.”

Tips and chal­lenges

To me, the biggest chal­lenge in Fin­land was and to an extent still is a dif­fer­ent approach to things. It is quite relaxed and some­times slow, in com­par­i­son to many coun­tries, which can be stress­ful if you need to get things done urgent­ly. You should always reserve some extra time, espe­cial­ly if you are doing some impor­tant stuff, such as at banks, at the hos­pi­tal, or when apply­ing for jobs. It takes time to get used to it, but this approach to things means that when you are set­tled and employed, you will get to enjoy the respect of your free time, too.

I would rec­om­mend first and fore­most to put an effort into learn­ing Finnish. In Oulu, you will have plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to do it, for exam­ple, at the uni­ver­si­ty (even if you are not a stu­dent) or at Vil­la Vic­tor. Speak­ing Finnish, even a bit, will open plen­ty of doors for you, and it will help you set­tle. Also, the impor­tance of net­work­ing in Fin­land can­not be over­stat­ed.

If you have time and ener­gy to go to fairs and recruit­ment and net­work­ing events, do it! Tell about your­self, your skills, and your expe­ri­ence when you can, and ask for sup­port at employ­ment-relat­ed ser­vices and career cen­tres. Vol­un­teer­ing can give you plen­ty of new expe­ri­ence and valu­able con­nec­tions, so do not shut those oppor­tu­ni­ties down, if offered.

All in all, I enjoy life here in Oulu. I hope that my intern­ship con­tin­ues as employ­ment here at the city ser­vices, but we will see. I am open to changes, but I would like to stay in Oulu and con­tin­ue the calm North­ern life here.