The newsletter is your guide to what's happening on LUT campuses and the student community as well as to bachelor's and master's programmes updates and admission instructions. Newsletters will be delivered to your email once a month.
Why study in Finland? Education meets curiosity
People often ask me why I came to Finland to study, and the easy answer is a better education. That’s true, but a huge part of it was simply curiosity. I had always wanted to know what it would be like to live somewhere other than my home country and whether I could adapt to a new culture and environment.
Before I left, I had a lot of doubts. Was I picking the right programme? Would I make any friends? Could I handle living somewhere where I didn't speak a word of the language? Could I build an entire life from scratch?
I’d studied biotechnology before, and I wanted to work on the bigger picture rather than making changes at the molecular level. That’s why I chose environmental technology. During my bachelor’s studies, it was the subject that excited me most, because it deals with problems that touch everyone: How do we use resources? What kinds of renewable energy technologies should we use? What do we do with waste, and what can we do about climate change? LUT seemed the best choice, because its Master’s Programme in Sustainability Science and Solutions is built exactly around those questions.
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What is Lappeenranta like? Silence, Saimaa and forests
My first impression of Lappeenranta was a bit surreal. The streets were quiet. Not the kind of quiet you get on a lazy weekend, but a silence that never lifted, as if the whole town was holding its breath. There were forests with tall green pine trees at the end of every street, and there was a lake that seemed to go on forever. Even my room felt quiet in an empty way, because what was really missing was home: my family, my friends, years of memories suddenly thousands of kilometers away. That all hit me after a journey where everything had gone sideways and left me exhausted.
It was peaceful, but the first week or two were rough. Every day felt like the same loop of exploring the city, buying groceries, and figuring out the campus, and there were moments when I wondered if I had left everything behind for nothing.
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Studying at LUT started to feel less like a full-time job and more like being part of a team working towards something together.
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What are the studies like? Teamwork and independence
The lectures surprised me too. Back home, studies had always felt like the center of everything – show up, don't miss anything, treat it like your full-time job. At LUT, it wasn't lighter, just different.
Teamwork suddenly mattered as much as the material itself, and groups of students carried out projects that ended in real deliverables. Getting to know people and enjoying student life became part of the studying itself. With that came more freedom and responsibility, and studies became a lot more self-directed.
It was on me to figure out how to organize my time. Grades weren't decided by one big exam either; smaller assignments spread throughout the course meant the whole semester counted, not just the one exam at the end. So, studying at LUT started to feel less like a full-time job and more like being part of a team working towards something together. Showing up for each other counted just as much as showing up for the lectures, and the university cared as much about me settling in as about me passing exams.
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Was it the right decision? Comfort zones and solving real problems
Somewhere along the way, without really noticing, Finland started feeling like home. The silence that felt so lonely at first started to feel calm, and the forests became the place I'd go to relax after studies. Walking by the lake also became part of my daily routine; I’d often just sit there and listen to the birds chirping. Things that felt scary at first, such as grocery shopping, public transportation, and generally existing in a new country, became normal. Every small thing I figured out made me a bit more confident and happier.
Looking back, moving to Finland turned out to be about so much more than just the degree. It taught me that stepping outside of my comfort zone pays off, that confidence grows from small things figured out one by one, and that uncertainty isn't something to be scared of. Sometimes it's just the start of something new that holds lots of opportunities.
Studying sustainability science and solutions was the right choice in that sense too, because it let me look at the whole system instead of a single molecule, and the deeper I got into it, the more it felt like solving real problems with people from different backgrounds. It's not just knowledge for the sake of a diploma – sustainability and taking care of our surroundings genuinely matters right now, and I think of myself as being way more aware of my environment than I used to be.
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It's not just knowledge for the sake of a diploma – sustainability and taking care of our surroundings genuinely matters right now, and I think of myself as being way more aware of my environment than I used to be.
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