Almost seven months has passed since this year’s Academic Adventures. For me it feels as if it was just couple of weeks ago when we had the chance to meet all of the amazing participants in this year’s event. The event was organized at the end of May and we had participants flying in from Denmark, Great Britain, Belgium, Malta and Israel. The atmosphere in the events was fascinating and the group was fantastic. There were all together eighteen participants in the event and I feel that it was just the right amount of people to keep the event in more personal level. The project team had a chance to get to know the participants and also the participants were able to make connections and get to know one another since the first day they arrived in Tampere.

I was the project manager in this year’s Academic Adventures, and I can say for sure that I had the best project team around me. Unfortunately the team was not as large as I would have hoped for, but we didn’t let it slow us down too much. It meant that we had to work even harder as team to achieve our goals in creating an amazing training week into team learning. Our project team was lucky enough to receive help from our community in Proakatemia especially on the event week, which I am still very thankful for.

One of the best memories from the event is from the night when we organized an evening event for our participants in the middle of the training week. The location of the event was in Kaukajärvi, where the participants had a chance to go to sauna by the lake and also swim in the lake. We played Mölkky and made grilled sausage. We wanted to give our participants as authentic Finnish experience as possible and I believe that we succeeded in that mission. It was amazing to see how almost all of the participants wanted to go to the sauna and dip into the lake. The summer was only just beginning so the water temperature was not that warm yet. The weather in the evening was perfect considering that earlier that day we experienced heavy rain with thunder while visiting Alumni companies.

Academic Adventures is coming again next year, and it is again organized in Proakatemia on 25.-29.5.2020. Jasmeet (nickname Jasu) Saini is the new project manager of the event and he has gathered a team around him. I hope that the next year’s event will be as amazing or even more amazing as it was this year. Best of luck to the new Academic Adventures project team! Remember to celebrate even the smallest victories along the way!

Picture of our 2019 project team. In the picture from left is Titta, Jasu, Evianna and me (Anna)