Getting known to MUN

No more orientation, welcome events and get-to-know-one-another activities. By now everyday life is about studying during the day and something else in the evening. I've been more or less sick for over a week now, which is my excuse for not exploring the city as much as I would have liked. So this post will be brief and mostly about the MUN campus, and how it differs from LUT.

The campus

MUN campus (hospital and faculty of medicine missing from bottom left)

First of all, MUN campus is quite big compared to LUT. Just the distance from one end (Music building) to another (Faculty of medicine, missing from the map) is roughly twice the distance between the furthermost points of Saimia and Student Union House back home. And since there are so many different programs available, it's no wonder. The classrooms and facilities are not that different from LUT, except that they are mostly older and divided into several different buildings.

Nearly all the buildings in the picture are connected to each other with tunnels (MUNnels) or walkways. At first I was happy to walk outside when the sun was shining and you could just wear shorts and t-shirts without a problem. Now when it's raining sideways, I'd rather take the MUNnels.

Beneath Paton College (residences).

Between academic buildings.

Apart from classrooms and tunnels, there's a field house (free for students), including indoor tracks, swimming pool, gyms and courts for different games. Gyms are a bit weird though, since machines are located in multiple rooms in different floors. There's a large library including classics such as Kalevala and Seitsemän Veljestä. University centre has all kinds of services for students, e.g. bookstore, food court and a small store. And if you think study books are expensive in Finland, I can assure you, they're not. As I mentioned briefly in the previous post, there's also some money allocated on your student account to use in cafes around the campus, so you could get Subway or other stuff a lot of times without paying anything extra.

I'm taking four different courses, that I will cover more thoroughly later. One of them is an English course, one is an undergrad engineering course and two are grad engineering courses. Teaching methods are similar to LUT: on language courses you should attend most of the classes, and there's lots of minor assignments/homework and class interaction. On engineering courses you should attend classes as well, but attendance is not enforced or followed (apart from labs). Lectures are as you would except, there are individual and group assignments/projects and laboratory sessions seem to be more common.

What else?

Not much, I've went to downtown a couple of times, watched N hours of Netflix while sick and hanged out with the people from my house. There are quite a lot of events in the evenings, but I won't get too deep into those here. I'm slowly starting to plan out stuff to do on the weekends, so maybe next time I'll have cooler pictures to show.

-Aapo

Don't leave your door unlocked.

On my way home.