“After a Brief Talk, I Made This Crazy Deci­sion” – Sha­keel’s Unique Jour­ney

Sha­keel Mehmet’s sto­ry about Oulu is an inspir­ing tale of how a chance encounter can lead to a life-chang­ing deci­sion.

“I attend­ed a post­grad­u­ate fair at Sheffield Uni­ver­si­ty where I was study­ing, because I had my heart set on doing a mas­ter’s degree in busi­ness man­age­ment after com­plet­ing my bach­e­lor’s degree.

I looked around and noth­ing had piqued my inter­est, so I was about to leave, when I noticed a small stand in the cor­ner, “Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu”.

Hmm, nev­er heard of Oulu before… Let’s check that out. After a brief talk with the rep­re­sen­ta­tives, I made the crazy deci­sion to apply, and sure enough I was accept­ed to the Inter­na­tion­al Master’s pro­gramme.

The main pre­con­cep­tions were from the offi­cial leaflet giv­en to me at the event, it gave some extreme­ly impor­tant infor­ma­tion: Finns love cof­fee, ice cream and air gui­tar.

“I made the crazy deci­sion to apply, and I was accept­ed to the Inter­na­tion­al Master’s pro­gramme.”

I guess we were aligned on 2 out of 3 things, works for me. I do remem­ber my course­mate in Sheffield, telling me that it would be hard to make friends in Fin­land, as they had lived in Fin­land for a few years.

Made a Big Mis­take?

I can tell you my first con­ver­sa­tion in Oulu, which was at the air­port bus stop. The bus was delayed by 40 min­utes might as well strike up a con­ver­sa­tion.

“I’ve just moved here, how is this city?”

“Well… It’s okay (just okay) in the sum­mer. But the cof­fee is – bleep – no idea why we drink it!”

So much for the hap­pi­est peo­ple I thought to myself as I gazed towards the air­port won­der­ing if I had made a ter­ri­ble mis­take. I did have to appre­ci­ate the crisp air and the nature.

An Easy Ice Break­er

For­tu­nate­ly, I was lucky to be in a class with a good mix of natives and for­eign­ers, and it was quite easy to make friends.

Before I arrived, I had also read how Finns were extreme­ly intro­vert­ed – to the point of being cold, how­ev­er I found that was a big mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Reserved… Per­haps, but so am I at times so I can iden­ti­fy with that.

I also found the natives that I talked to par­tic­u­lar­ly curi­ous as to why I made the deci­sion to come to Oulu, so that was an easy ice break­er most of the time.

Learned to Love the Sauna

Dur­ing my first win­ter here, the dark­ness took its toll on my gen­er­al mood. How­ev­er, I real­ized quick­ly that I had to devel­op some hob­bies, and it was dur­ing that tough win­ter where I learned to love the sauna.

Although I almost faint­ed the first time. I would say that it took me around six months to ful­ly set­tle in.

Thoughts on Finnish Lan­guage

Para­dox­i­cal, it’s tricky because of the var­i­ous word bend­ings and verb con­ju­ga­tions and remem­ber­ing to use the cor­rect one in con­ver­sa­tion.

On the oth­er hand, I like the fact that it is a very lit­er­al lan­guage, words sound like how they are writ­ten.

I com­plet­ed a few basic lan­guage cours­es while study­ing and then using Duolin­go to expand my vocab­u­lary.

I try to use Finnish while doing mun­dane things: order­ing cof­fee, enquir­ing about items, basic con­ver­sa­tion etc.

Cur­rent­ly, I am in the inte­gra­tion course and attend­ing work prac­tice at the Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu to devel­op work­ing lev­el Finnish.

Work­ing in Oulu

While I haven’t found work in my field yet, I have done a myr­i­ad of jobs which have giv­en me a well-round­ed skillset.

When it comes to the job seek­ing process, I am far more con­fi­dent in apply­ing and find­ing a posi­tion in my field now because I see the val­ue and applic­a­bil­i­ty of all my pri­or work expe­ri­ence which I hope with my aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground and soon to be com­pe­tent Finnish, that it’ll be far eas­i­er to find work in Oulu.

Fun to Cycle Around

There is a very strong stu­dent com­mu­ni­ty in Oulu which orga­nizes lots of events, for me it was nice to find oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet new peo­ple through these events. Even after grad­u­at­ing, it’s cool to main­tain those groups and activ­i­ties.
For instance, in a reg­u­lar week I would play in mul­ti­ple sport groups.

I’ve thor­ough­ly enjoyed the sum­mers here. It’s fun to cycle around to dif­fer­ent places, go to the beach to swim and play vol­ley­ball and I also got to enjoy the mök­ki (sum­mer house) expe­ri­ence.

My advice to peo­ple com­ing to Oulu is to be proac­tive in find­ing groups for your inter­ests, pas­times and hob­bies. If you can’t find your inter­est groups, then cre­ate your own, because peo­ple are usu­al­ly very respon­sive.”