I forget how different the education system is here, until days like today. As a general rule, university classes in Finland don't require weekly assignments, and even the assigned work isn't turned in for credit. The entire grade for your 10-week course is often determined upon one final paper or test. This sounds a little daunting, but unlike the American system, if you take a test and fail (or even if you take it and get a grade you don't like) you can retake the same test until you pass or get the grade you want.
Scheduling here also isn't rigid like it is at the UW. Take my experience today- a class, Quarternary Environmental Change, was supposed to start last Wednesday. So I showed up... and then found out that the schedule had changed, that it instead started a week later. So I go to the class today... and find out that the schedule had changed yet again, and while I had written down that the class started at 1, it had, in fact, already taken place, at 10am. I was pretty upset to find out that I had missed the first meeting of this class- I was/still am really excited about it, but due to me being unfamiliar with how changeable time schedules are here, I missed it.
Oh well. Now I have learned to keep checking the schedule online until the day the course starts.
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