Student Stories: A Semester Studying Physics in Aberdeen

I have always been interested in living in UK for a little while, so when I was looking for a place to do my exchange semester in it was a natural choice. It of course helped that for an English-speaking country the distance I’d have to travel was comparatively small and thus the costs much lower than many other majority English speaking countries. After discovering the north2north program, Scotland piqued my interest. Aberdeen University became my first choice after seeing the pictures of the beautiful historic campus and learning about the ease of getting accommodation when comparing to bigger cities like Glasgow.

I am a physics student back at Tampere University and apart from one course, all my courses were physics at Aberdeen University. The teaching was mainly similar to back home with couple key differences. The biggest difference in the physics classes was that the teaching during the lectures was considerably less mathematical. Unlike in Tampere we didn’t spend much time on deriving equations or doing example calculations in lectures and instead more time was spent on explaining the implications of said equations. Although this was very interesting it was a true challenge for me to learn most of the maths outside of classes. Another difference to Tampere was the increased amount of compulsory attendance classes. There were weekly tutorials from my physics classes which were mandatory to attend, and my geography lectures also took attendance. I feel this is quite a rare occurrence at Tampere University and attendance there is left more to the discretion of the students themselves. Another slight difference in physics teaching was an emphasis on larger assignments instead of weekly problem sheets which are in my experience preferred at Tampere University.
Personally, I feel like I do better with the system at place in Tampere but that could also just be because it’s what I’m used to.

 Aberdeen itself is a lovely town there’s enough to explore without it feeling overwhelmingly large which could be the case for some larger cities. As is commonly said the town is very grey, which some people might not find the most attractive, but personally I think the grey granite buildings fit the rainy Scottish landscape incredibly well and create and atmosphere unlike anywhere else.

There are plenty of castles, beautiful seaside cliffs and small villages to explore and the highlands are always a short drive away. The winter here was warmer and wetter than back home but coming from a country with less elevation change, it was very interesting to see what a huge difference it makes when you drive two hours inland towards the highlands. The green rainy fields quickly turn into snowy mountains with below zero temperatures. Hiking in the Highlands is somewhat like Lapland, but you shouldn’t underestimate the mountains. The Finnish fells aren’t quite as impressive as the Munros of the Highlands.

I think the most significant takeaway from my exchange experience is getting to know other people from all around the world and creating incredible lifelong memories exploring Scotland with them. I’d recommend anyone interested in doing an exchange semester as a part of their studies to consider Scotland and Aberdeen.

 Niklas completed a north2north exchange from Tampere University to the University of Aberdeen.