May Kick-off post!

Dear friends and family,

It has been a rather interesting week here in Tampere. Upon returning from Germany, much of the information I'd been waiting on for the past couple months was delivered to me this week [Nokia-Siemens is out]. First off though, I hung out with Lauren on Tuesday - she brought hummus, we made stove-top popcorn - it was a delicious evening!

Wednesday I received a rejection letter from Aalto University. I'd applied to their International Design Business Management program back in February. Sadly, I can't fight their decision. 1/3 of the application is work experience and I just couldn't compete with the 1104 other applicants. The rankings they give you are out of 15 and since 5 of those points are for work experience, I ended up with a 9. I can't complain though. If I would've had relevant work experience (counted in years), I would've gotten in for sure.

Since getting that letter and having absolutely no other options to pursue at Aalto, I decided to appeal the first decision from Uni. Helsinki, which I found was very subjective. I wrote them a well-constructed letter today explaining that my undergraduate degree isn't way off base for this master's I applied to. I have no idea if this will make any sort of difference whatsoever, but in the meantime, I felt that at least I could do something with it!

Last night, Eeva came over and we began a kokkikerhu! (Cooking club) We want to meet regularly and make food so that we can both develop our cooking skills and cook in good company - thus the club! We made Spinach Tofu-stuffed Zucchini and it was absolutely delicious! I didn't take a picture and now that half the pan's been eaten, it wouldn't look professional to snap a shot but I'll be sure to capture it next time.

Today, I wrote my appeal in the morning, mailed it by 12:30 and met up with the WokWok crew around 1pm. Mia was there too so I got to see lots of friendly, familiar faces in one place. Nina had her car so I got a ride home after lunch and here I am. I started scanning through more job websites and found some interesting stuff. I'm going to keep applying and I'm also going to start applying to more permanent, full-time positions, especially in Tampere when I can find them. I can't rely 100% on getting into school so it's good to have other options. Nevertheless, I haven't yet bothered to get all stressed and work on a plan B in case all else fails. Either way, I actually want to be interested in the program I would be studying so I need to do some research into the universities as well and make sure that's where I want to spend the next 2 years of my life.

So for now, I'm just being patient for a few more days (I'm waiting on another decision May 17th.) and finding new opportunities through different media modes. [For example, I just joined Twitter this week! Look me up!]