INSIDER 22.11.2019 | VOL. 22 | ISSUE 10
STUDENT MAGAZINE OF XAMK
Featuring Exchange view International week Game review Startup camp Student story Movie review
STAFF
EDITORIAL
LIDIIA BENKOVSKAIA
ARIAN UKAJ
JASMINE LAIMER
MUHAMMET CAKIROGLU
JOONATAN BERG
PRAKHAR SHARMA
ANNA RYNDINA
NIKITA MUNENKO
HENNA SUORTTI
CLAUDIA RIVA
INSIDER STUDENT MAGAZINE South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences Paraatikenttä 7 45100 Kouvola INSIDER ISSN 1457-1587 Editor in Chief: HUGH CLACK
PHONE +358 44 702 8758 WEBSITE insider.xamk.fi EMAIL insider@xamk.fi 2
EDITORIAL The International Craze Is it just me or as the International Week comes closer and closer – there is a change in campus atmosphere? It is almost as if everyone gets there saddles ready to participate and be a part of the forthcoming international experience. From the highly anticipated “food-tasting” to getting an insight on international topics covered by the various guest lecturers, everything about it just feels enthusiastic!
Meanwhile, our exchange journalist Jasmine brings to you about her adventures in Tromsø, while our new member Claudia takes over student story for this week. This week is special not only because international week is going on, but also in this issue both of our designers decided to pen their experiences and so Henna wrote about the Start-up Camp for artists, whereas Joonathan played this game “The Outer Worlds” about which he decided to write the review about. After his While you folks are enjoying the international last week disappointment with the new terminator week, take a look at the things brought to you by movie, Nikita decided to review “Midway” starring the Insider team this week. If you thought that the Luke Evans. editorial introduction was the last you were gonna see about international week in this issue, then In the end, I hope you really had fun in one of the I’ll be happy to tell you it’s not all as Muhammet is most eventful weeks of the year in the campus going to refresh our readers with his article about especially if you managed to experience the Tedx the experience and memories of the International Event organised right here in the campus. We’ll Week held last year at the campus. get back to you next week covering all the different events that took place this week in depth.
Prakhar Sharma 3
EXCHANGEVIEW Tromsø, Norway For this week, I chose to travel to Tromsø, a city which is considered to be the most important cultural centre in the North of the arctic circle. Tromsø is located in the North of Norway and is famous for Northern lights and an amazing nature. I chose the city Tromsø for my Norway trip as many people told me that the capital Oslo is not really worth a visit. However, I wanted to visit Norway once in my life, and therefore I searched for flights. Direct flights from Helsinki to the North of Norway can be counted on the fingers of one hand, but luckily, Tromsø is one of them. So I booked my flight, although it was not that cheap, and found a hostel which is “affordable” in the city centre. I landed on Tuesday, 5:00 pm local time (1 hour less than Finland). Afterwards, I took the bus from the airport to the city centre, which costs converted into Euros approximately 10€. I put my stuff in the hostel and chose to walk around the city, even though it was already pitch dark. On Wednesday, I decided to see the city from above, and therefore I went to the famous Fjellheisen cable car, as I haven’t had enough
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time to hike up there on my own. The cable car is really cheap, compared to Austrian ones, it costs approximately 20€ to go up and down again and they offer student discount. The trip is only series of 4 minutes and the view "Fragments"up there is absolutely paintings amazing. I was lucky to go there at 11:30 am, because the sun just rose over the city, so I had a beautiful view from up there. After Fjellheisen, I went to the Polaria museum, which is not only interesting because of its remarkable architecture, but because they call attention to plastic pollution in seas. Furthermore, you can watch seals and other sea dwellers from different prospectives. The museum offers an amazing student discount, instead of paying 145 NOK (~15€), students pay 80 NOK (~8€). When I went out of the museum at 3 pm, it was already pitch dark. I chose to buy some souvenirs and lunch for the evening, before I went back to the hostel. At 5 pm, the most important part of my trip started, the Northern lights chasing tour. I booked this trip in beforehand, because it’s nearly impossible to see the Northern lights in the city as there`s simply too much light. As I’m a student, I chose to book the cheapest option: 6-10 hours bus tour
NORWAY from Tromsø for ~95€. We drove to a place one hour away from the city centre (can’t remember the name, sorry). The temperature dropped pretty fast from 0 degrees in the city centre to -10. This is because of the gulf stream, which reaches the city centre, but not the surrounding parts of the city. We finally arrived in the middle of nowhere, put on our warmest clothes and stepped outside of the bus. And finally, Northern lights! After searching for them unsuccessfully for one week in Iceland three years ago, I finally saw them. Even though it was incredible cold, it was just an amazing experience to see what nature has to offer. After approximately 1 hour, the guides decided to go to a warmer place – Laksvatn. On our journey there, they told us a lot of interesting things about Fjords, the nature and the phenomena Aurora borealis itself. When we arrived in Laksvatn, “Lady Aurora”, how they also call the Northern lights, showed herself in a more beautiful way than I could have ever imagined. The sky lighted up in bright green and the lights even started to dance. As the green light reflected itself in the Fjord, the guides lighted up a bonfire and served hot chocolate with cookies. At 2 am, we came back to the city centre where I happily went to bed. Already on the next day, at 11 am, I sadly had to leave this beautiful city to go back to Finland. But even if it´s only been two nights, I highly recommend Tromsø for your next trip. A stunning nature, many student discount offers and Northern lights – a perfect journey to forget about the stress in university. Jasmine Laimer
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EVENT International Week Most excited week of our curriculum is back. The International Week. Well, at least for some of us. This week is about many things but what it brings to our mind first is the food tasting. For many students, it is just about the food tasting. You all will experience this year but we would like to remind the last year’s experience. As most of you know, our International Business program is changed to Digital International Business program. Last year on international week, the first day program included a workshop about digitalization for students. This, somehow, tells us the effects of the program. Or it is a coincidence, we do not know. What we know is that the information and knowledge we have in the international week program is very much relevant to our life. Do not miss them. Copy your CV and give it away to people in workshops. You never know what will happen. Job Fair event was kept in paja for 2 days. Interactions between school, students and employers to the maximum for very long time and some of our students got their internships from this event. Feels good. But other than that, since it is called international week, lecturers from different countries and different schools came to our campus. Gave us lectures about their specializations. Mostly about business aspect but there was, of course, some interest for everyone from leadership to fashion.
France. Muhammet, Tino and Dori. The experience in there was a bit different but the core idea of the event is the same. They did not have food tasting. This year, you were informed about the program by The Insider. We would like to encourage everyone to take part in the whole week. Meeting new people, learning new things, gathering new information and tasting new food. Sounds exciting.
One of the most entertaining events was the Fashion show. Our design students had prepared a fashion show for the week. Fashion TV on our school for 1 hour. And the crowd that took part in watching this was very big. This week also happens in different countries. And some of our lecturers and students participate in those. Last year, we sent 3 students to Lyon, 6
Muhammet Cakiroglu Photo by: Victoria Mokrushina
GAME REVIEW "It's not the Best Choice - It's Spacer's Choice™!" The Outer Worlds is an Sandbox RPG made by Obsidian Entertainment, who are known for making sequels to already established franchises like Fallout New Vegas and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. This time Obsidian has released their own franchise and boy did they come out with bang. Outer Worlds is set in the far away galaxy of Halcyon. Halcyon is a colonised civilization consisting of many planets, but corporations have taken over every colony there is and are forcing the residents to spout marketing catchphrases to travelers. The player plays as an unknown person who was abroad the colony ship Hope, which was on it’s way to Halcyon on a ten year trip until the ship’s Sublight engine’s malfunctioned and extended the trip to sixty years. The player character is awakend by the mad scientist Phineas Vernon Welles, who tasks the player to go to the various planets to help to cities and towns, as well as finding a way to revive the other colonists abroad the Hope. The game is brimming with personality and charm, which is helped by the wonderful cast of companions that the player can meet and recruit during your adventure, like Parvati, a mechanic from Edgewater or my personal favourite, SAM, the Sanitation and Maintenance automechanical that shoots acid at enemies. The player can have two out of six companions with them outside in the wild. Companions help with combat and also boost certain stats like persuade or hacking. Other than the companions, each planet is brim with random characters that you can talk and get quests from. Obsidian isn’t really known from good combat, it’s always felt a little… flat, but to everyone’s surprise the combat in Outer Worlds is actually very good. Guns feel very satisfying and companion abilities feel like they’re powerful, but they are very repetitive. After the fifth time that Nyoka chugs down a bottle of booze and let’s out a yell while showering a monster with bullets, I started to get a bit bored. I felt that there weren’t enough weapon variants in the game, excluding the Science weapons (Shrink Ray, Anti-Gravity Gun), but this problem is fixed by the
upgrading in the game, where you can upgrade any weapon infinitely. A neat little feature they added into the game is phobias. If the player character gets damaged by a certain monster/damage type/way. They can choose to have a phobia for it for example, fear of heights or fear of robots (Don’t pick that one) and the character will lose points in certain skills, but will gain a feat point, which can be used to upgrade the character. The game is very easy, even when playing on hard. If this is a problem for you, consider playing on Supernova difficulty. Supernova basically makes everything go wrong if you play it normally. Your companions can permanently die, every enemy has more health and does more damage and you can only save on your ship. All in all The Outer Worlds a very charming Sci-fi Sanbox RPG. If you’re craving for a good story, give this game a try. Joonatan Berg
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STARTUP CAMP Entrepeneurial camp in Spain! 3.11 was the first day of a project called AHEH (Arts and Humanities Entrepreneurship Hubs) that was held in a city called Alcala de Henares near the city of Madrid, Spain. This project is meant to introduce entrepreneurial knowledge to Art and Humanity Students. During our studies in Alcala we were divided into teams and we had very interesting cases to challenge our creative skills. There were also workshops daily and after long intensive lessons we also got a bit of free time to get to know each other better. Our group was big, international and included students from various art fields, which made the whole experience so much more rewarding. There were students from Portugal, Wales, Ireland, Finland, Croatia and peace regarding studying in the library which was cool yet funny. Sorry for all the local students for Italy. being a bit noisy. On our first day we were introduced to each other, we had fun exercises and at the end of the day We lived the week in a local university student some teambuilding. The city of Alcala was small residence. It was amazing how the Spanish and inspiring, and our workspace was in the main and international students could live there while library of the city. The library was big, and we studying. The residence was huge with probably had a creative space at the top floor. As artists over 300 or even more rooms. The rooms were we were perhaps a bit talkative because of all small but super compact with all necessities. Also, the enthusiasm and inspiration, so every time we the food was super good every day and what entered or left the building people would “shuss� surprised us was that you got two plates of food us. The Spanish take good care of silence and plus salad and desserts. What was even more
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FOR ARTISTS bizarre compared to Finland for example was that Spanish students ate dinner at 8 pm. It was mindblowing. After our first intense workday, the week really hit off and we started with interesting lectures concerning entrepreneurship and getting to know our mentors. We got to dive into our teamwork, and we sank into that creative “flow” state of mind. Our team was amazing because it was luckily full of likeminded students from different fields of practice and we had such wonderful and meaningful conversations of our topic as well as worldviews. The case of my team was to “save the world”. An easy topic right! The way we wanted to change the world was to aid people find their passion, because it´s not always easy in this demanding and everchanging society. The cases of other teams concerned “giving new meaning to old buildings”, “How to reach people who are marginalized?”, “How to engage students in entrepreneurial training?”, “creative ways to make cultural events more sustainable”, “strategies to address cultural differences” and “intergenerational project to break down barriers”. Most rewarding things during the whole week was gaining more confidence trough knowledge and networking with new people from other cultures. Entrepreneurship might possibly be a bit unknown and nervous subject for creative students but the knowledge we gained during this project will be very helpful and valuable in the future. Entrepreneurial knowledge gives us an advantage to know how to put ourselves and our skills out there after we graduate. For example, after graduation wouldn’t it be very welcome to have knowledge of how to brand yourself and your skills, how to express your ideas to others and most importantly, how to have a valuable and meaningful network of individuals for your future career.
Be brave to grow your networks by joining events and gaining experiences. Not only will you learn but you also grow as a person and hopefully trough experiences like these, find your own passion if it´s still in search or you need confirmation of the direction you want to be headed. Building up your experiences and connecting with others is valuable in this technological generation we are living in. Value connections, become passionate and start changing the world for the better, because everyone has the potential and something of their own to give.
Henna Suortti 9
STUDENTSTORY Meet Chiara
Hi! My name is Chiara and I come from Italy. I live in Sardinia, a beautiful island in the Mediterranean sea. It’s a little paradise in the summer: there are beautiful beaches, the sun is always so warm and you can relax with your friends!
to meet many new people, experience the best school system in the world and travel a lot! During this months I visited many finnish cities, Estonia, Sweden, Poland, Netherlands and in December I will finally go to Lapland! I really like how finnish people are open minded and I really love the In Italy, I study Business and Management in the nature here. I also like how university in Finland University of Cagliari. I decided to study business is giving me free time for the activities that I most because I’m really interested in understanding like: learn new languages, photography, travel, how is working the business model in which we walking in the nature and going to museums. I’m are living. I specialized in Marketing because it’s very passionate about art and I think that roman something in between business and psychology. I and renaissance art are very fascinating. But now find very interesting to understand the psychological that days are becoming shorter, darker and colder aspects behind a customer behaviour. it’s time to spend more time home with my friends, having deep conversations while sipping warm I chose Finland for my Erasmus because I wanted coffee and watching tv-series. to experience something new and completely different from my home country (I saw the snow After my Erasmus I still have one year of University for the first time here!). I chose XAMK because in Sardinia before graduation. And then I’m it’s an university of applied science and it’s very planning continue studying for my master degree, different from universities in Italy: in Italy lessons probably something related to digital marketing are always theorical, but here we have also many and social media. But I still don’t know where, in practical projects that help me to understand better Italy, somewhere in Europe or who knows, maybe what I am studying. in Finland! For the moment, I’m very happy about my experience in Xamk because I had the possibility 10
Claudia Riva
STUDIO 123 Kymenlaaksonkatu 1 45700 Kuusankoski 044 375 3686 www.studio123.fi 22.11-28.11.2019 STUDIO 1 JUDY (12) | 12€ | 1h58min Sat-Sun 15:00 CORGI (7) | 11€ | 1h28min Fri-Mon, Wed-Thur 17:20 TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (16) | 12€ | 2h8min Fri-Sat, Wed 19:15 MIDWAY (12) | 12€ | 2h18min Sun-Mon, Thur 19:15 STUDIO 2 MESTARI CHENG (7) | 12€ | 1h54min Sat-Sun 14:45, Tue-Wed 16:45 TARHAPÄIVÄ (12) | 11€ | 1h38min Fri-Mon, Thur 17:00 JOKER (16) | 12€ | 2h2min Fri, Sun, Wed 19:00 LIGHTHOUSE (16) | 12€ | 1h49min Sat, Mon, Thur 19:00 MYSTEERINÄYTÖS (12) | 12€ | ?h ?min Tue 19:00 STUDIO 3 DOWNTOWN ABBEY (7) | 12€ | 2h2min Sat-Sun 14:30 Tue-Wed 16:45 LAST CHRISTMAS (7) | 11€ | 1h42min Fri-Mon, Thur 17:00 SYSTEM CRASHER (16) | 12€ | 1h59min Fri, Sun, Tue, Thur 19:00 Students/armed services, pensioners 1€ discount on all full priced tickets of 10€ or more
MOVIEREVIEW Midway This film is a re-tells the story of the events in the first months of the War in the Pacific beginning with Pearl Harbor and culminating in the Battle of Midway (June 1942). In between, it also touched on Doolittle's Raid on Tokyo (April 1942) and the Battle of Coral Sea (May 1942). The story was told mainly from the point of view of two American soldiers, namely pilot Lt. Dick Best (Ed Skrein) who led his dive bomber squadron at Midway, and intelligence officer Lt. Comm. Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson) who with his code-breaker team predicted the Midway attack. Along the way, we meet other American soldier that are supposed to be famous, I had to research them tho: Admiral Chester Nimitz Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet; Vice Admiral William "Bull" who led the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise; Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance who took over the Enterprise for the Battle of Midway; Best's fellow aviators Lt. Comm. Wade McCluskyLt. Comm. Eugene Lindsey and Lt. Comm. Jimmy Doolittle; cryptographer Commander Joseph Rochefort and Aviation Machinist Mate Bruno Gaido . The execution of the critical battle scenes are the main draws to watch this film. Director Roland Emmerich will always be remembered as the man who brought us "Independence Day" and 2012. Of course, there are big explosions and massive destruction here as well. The massive scenes showing fiery exploding seacraft and aircraft were rendered with awesome cinematography and meticulous visual effects to create impressive screen spectacles. The aviation scenes, particularly the dive bomber runs by Dick Best, were excellently staged, shot and edited to elicit an exhilarating rush. For its 2 hours 18 minute run, the story of the crucial naval battles and the heroism of its real-life protagonists were front and center here in "Midway." There were no fictional characters or cheesy love stories like in the first "Midway" film or "Pearl Harbor." While seeing some popular young actors like Criss or Jonas can be distracting, the all-star cast generally rendered honor and respect to the heroes they portrayed.
Nikita Munenko