Working at BUIC - an overview

Students are the same everywhere. Are they? Of course there are some similarities as we are talking about Generation Y: they're craving attention in the forms of feedback and guidance after they feel comfortable enough to deal with a new teacher. "Generation Y is willing to trade high pay for fewer billable hours, flexible schedules and a better work/life balance" means in their student days that everything should be enterteining and easy and half-readymade by teacher, and they're living in accordance with their personal schedules, not with the official school timetable. In a way it's the same in Finland too, but Finnish student culture is a bit more punctual.

Added to this, the polychronic concept of time typical for Asian people, we punctual Finnish ones are in serious troubles - easily feeling offended because people do not respect your time and presence the way we are used to. Well, I have tried to change my attitude to cope with this - and pretty well succeeded so far.

Anyway, sometimes it is really frustrating to notice that there is only one or a few students present in the beginning of lecture. Then the others come and go as they wish, and sometimes even the whole group happens to be in class. I do not use such methods as locking the doors because it doesn't suit my democratic and on-demand coaching ideology.

In general, I enjoy my work here at BUIC really much - the students are lovely, and talkative. This experience is a good opportunity for me to learn several things about intercultural communication in practice!

to be continued...