Studying with ERASMUS

By Dylan Kwok. Located in the northeastern part of Europe, Finland is situated between Sweden and Russian. As the daughter of the Baltic Sea, it not only shares the same time zone with the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but also Greece and Turkey. If we draw a circle with a five-hour flying radius and Helsinki in the center, it will cover the Arctic villages in the north and the Mediterranean towns in the south. This Nordic EU member may seem remote, but flying to Helsinki in facts takes only 8 hours from Beijing. With the national airliner providing direct flights from 11 major cities in Asia to Helsinki, this northern world design capital has becoming more popular among travelers flying between the two continents.
The egalitarian education system of the country has also made Finland a popular destination for international applicants. The number of Asian students who seeks upper education has been increased in the past decades. There are several major reasons that attract foreign students to pursue their graduate degree in Finland, including: the tuition-free master degree programs offered in English, various world-class facilities available on campus and the EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students aka ERASMUS. Established in 1987, the ERASMUS program supports students to undergo exchange programs between different European Universities during their studies. “Walk ten thousand miles. Read ten thousand books.” The classic Chinese proverb has definitely inspired many Chinese students including a Hong Kong media artist Chow Yik.
Yik studies Visual Culture in Aalto University’s Pori campus. Famous for its annual jazz festival, Pori is a coastal city on the southwest border of Finland. Studying in a medium-sized city, Yik was able to fully experience the nature in this country of thousand lakes in her first year. From picking mushrooms and berries; to winter swimming in avanto after Finnish sauna, her days in Pori has enriched her perspective in art and media. Being in the smaller town also encouraged her to attend different school organized trips and oversea projects including an Arctic visit to Tromsø (Norway) two workshops in Vilnius (Lithuania) and Istanbul (Turkey). Thanks to the Erasmus program, she is now on a one-year exchange in France at école supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes Métropole. Not only that she can now travel around central Europe easily, she has even visited Morocco in Africa!
The Pori-based student is planning to finish her thesis in Helsinki after her exchange, so that she can visit the rest of Scandinavia to complete her Grand Tour. This extensive experience has widened her horizons. She has also made more friends from different countries. But I believe the most valuable insight she has acquired, is the new way to look at her own country, and the most unique insight one can gain from studying overseas.
A Hong Kong native, Kwok has been practicing spatial design since his graduation in 2009 from the University of Art and Design. Having lived in various cities in East Asia, North America and the Scandinavia in the past decades, Kwok has experienced different educational settings in ideologically contrasting societies. He is now working on projects related to livability, innovation, and design activism.