Probably every university in Finland has student associations, they’re called guilds. Their members are students who wear outstanding outfits – colored overalls with many different ribbons. What do guilds do and why?
It’s unlike simple collegde student associations: these guilds are student formations which organize different cultural events at university campuses. Each guild constists of a student board that regulates the activities of association and organizes funny but useful events.
These events are useful because they are aimed not only to have fun at the parties apart from the studying weekdays but also to unite students by doing simple leisure activities such as Olympic games or green works such as energy collection: all student gather in the forest and collect dry tree branches.
Another example is Freshman Olympic games which are organized every year for the newcomers, so that recently enrolled students can easily adapt themselves to the environment. It’s only at the first glance student life in Finland seems to be quite and boring but in reality there are many kinds of really good events. The only problematic issue is to get to know about them.
Photos: Freshman Olympic games.
For this case there is always a newsletter feed sent to corporate (university) mail and facebook notifications in groups. However one tip to have really fun life in Finland: to create as much as possible personal social contacts with local students.
Photos: Logo painting. Students from different guilds paint their logo on the road leading to the university. All the guilds are divided in accordance with faculties, for instance students from School of Business wear yellow suit. And even exchange students have their overalls of blue color.
And, of course, winter is the largest season in Finland. As soon as there is enough of snow and the weather has a good temperature, guilds organize funny winter activities, including the ice-skating that I mentioned in previous post and the ice-hockey an essential part of the Finnish sport.
