Student story: Anna Abonyi

I am Anna, a 29-year-old International Business student from Hungary. Before moving to Finland I used to work with human resources and payroll. In 2019 I got engaged with my partner, who studied in Finland at the time and also I decided to move so that we could start our life together. We ended up in Joensuu and soon I realized that even though I already learned Finnish, I still needed to develop my language skills before I could find a suitable job. This was how I first encountered Karelia UAS as I started doing Finnish language courses at the Open UAS.

After completing some courses, I decided to apply for the International Business degree programme to refresh my knowledge and develop new skills in the field I previously had a career in. I realized quickly how different the study environment in Finland is compared to my home country. The Finnish style of studying fits me perfectly. It has more of a practical approach, and we constantly work with real life cases, which helps me recognizing the actual usefulness of the tools and knowledge that we gain, not to mention the flexibility! The latter surprised me the most, as I’m used to the rigidity of school schedules.

In the International Business programme we spend the first year essentially learning the basics of business management. In the year I’m currently completing we focus more on international operations, and how to adapt our knowledge to an international sphere and later the focus will shift to international account management. The university encourages us to start networking already, for example we get to do study visits to local companies. What I appreciate very much it that we have opportunities both for longer and for short-term exchanges. For me spending a semester in one of our partner universities is not a viable option, but this doesn’t mean I have to give up on these experiences, and there is a large selection of other opportunities to choose from.