Waiting for half a semester in excitement, finally, BNI17 comes to the heart of European Union, Brussels! The very first destination for this trip is Odisee University College. Let’s see what have we done there!
Being called as the “capital of Europe”, the city of Brussels is also the seat of the main administrative body of the European Union. It’s a legally bilingual city – both French and Dutch are official languages. After our one-week project trip, we also find it very international and inclusive.
Even though our main task this time is to visit the institutions of European Union, still, our first station is to visit HAMK’s new partner university – Odisee University College. Odisee University offers a professional bachelor programme of business management with a major in marketing, teaching in fully English language. Students will spend three years there as a full time student, until they have earned 180 ECTS.
Odisee University is known as being international. There are altogether 10217 students studying currently, and they come from 79 different nationalities. At the same time, 264 Odisee students are going abroad to seek for fresh air and new experience. After graduation, as shown by data, 94% of the graduates are able to get a job within 3 months. Thus we can easily find that Odisee University is a university which provides students with varies learning opportunities and diverse studying experience.
The very first impression when we first arrive to Odisee University College is the warm welcome from Odisee’s teacher and students with their hot coffee, tea and some sweets which wake up from the sleepyhead and a hunger of breakfast.
This time, HAMK students brought to Odisee University College a workshop about Immigration – the very problematic issue is happening in EU. The workshop was taken place successfully with the presentation of HAMK’s students and the team discussion section between HAMK and Odisee student. After the workshop, we also have so much time to discuss about life in Brussel. We have gotten so much inspiration from Odisee’s students’ spirit and the perspectives of Immigration and immigrants is something new to us.
After all, we got a lunch break. The Odisee’s students took us to eat the most famous food in Brussel – Frites – not French Fries – but Belgian Frites. The shop is only about 300m from the school. We got a lesson about how different the Belgian frites from French fries. According to Belgian student, the Fries here are fried twice in different temperatures to make the Fries soft inside and crunchy outside.
Odisee’s student is very hospitable. For the afternoon section they took us for a cup of beer. We had shared a lot of stories about living in Finland and Belgium and we exchanged our contacts for some night party during the week we were staying there.
Do you think those are enough reasons for you to consider about your next exchange semester in Odisee University College? If not then continue reading the following reasonable part.
Brussels is capital of Belgium therefore, compare to any other city in Belgium. International students are more welcome and more job opportunities since there are multiple international firm. According to students who are from Odisse University College, they all stated it was not hard to have part time job even though they cannot speak French because lot of job uses English as official language. Besides, there are always interesting events people can experience so that will make you have joyful university life.
In Odisse University College, I guarantee you will meet various people who are from various countries including EU and non-EU. By studying in such a cross cultural study atmosphere, you will obviously learn how you will work with people who are from different cultural background and that will lead you to have competency in workplace.
Odisee University College support multiple program students to have work placement. Also, according to interview from student from Odisse University College, he said he is very confident of getting employed since school is very helpful and there are many programs for job recruitment.
Studying in Odisse will offer not only having great university life but also people to have good chance to build their career!