My best memories from the University of Helsinki are related to starting my studies and the transformative experience it facilitated. In a blink of an eye, I was being treated as an adult who had something to say, who could create something worthwhile and who was interesting as a person.

It was easy to become part of a community and form meaningful relationships with people. This was all also connected with a genuine interest in my major, although with a hint of playfulness: goofing around with concepts, observing lecturers and fellow students, applying theories to odd places. And of course there were conversations on music, movies, books, politics and the big questions in life. I was allowed to mature among wonderful people and test my boundaries during seminars, essay writing and participating in a student organisation.

After my first year at university, I found myself in the group that founded the environmental organisation Dodo. I consider my second dose of higher education to be the ten-year period of active volunteering that followed. These are the people who made me the person I am today. I doubt I would have ever found them had I not met them through the University.