The spring semester started for MITIM students on Monday with orientation day followed by Finnish sauna evening. Also Tuesday we had more orientation, mainly about the schedule and the electronic systems, such as Noppa, WebOodi and Blackboard.
Today I had first Russian lesson. Most of the group started already 11th of January, so we have some catching up. At least the vocabulary is different and a bit wider than what we have been learning, but we probably went ahead with the grammatic. The book is (of course) different than the one we used in GSOM, but it looked quite ok. For me the best thing is that it´s in Finnish. Probably for foreign students it´s not that nice..
After Russian we had Strategic Management of Growth lecture. Shot said that it was very Finnish. Maybe she was referring to the professors Finnish way of speaking English, the humor and loose boundaries (it´s not as scary serious as in Russia, the deadlines are up to us, participation is not so required,etc.) and the examples of Finnish companies, such as Fiskars... But I liked the lecture, it was interesting.
Inspired by the lecture, I will go Saturday to buy or loan few books by Sun Tzu and Machiavelli. I don´t know if I can agree that the best way of learning strategy for business is to learn how to fight wars, but that´s what everyone else is doing. So I guess it´s compulsory to understand what everyone else is thinking in the business field. I just hope that I would work for more advantaged company in the future.
(I know, I sound too naive and idealistic sometimes. Today I "had a little bit of sugar and milk in my coffee")
