Architecture has always had a big effect on my mood. The old part of the University’s main building had just been renovated when I began studying. I stared in speechless admiration at the tall ceilings and the statues lining the corridors. Sitting in the lecture rooms in the new part of the building, I felt part of a long tradition, and it seemed I had entered the home of science and knowledge. In my first year, I took many courses in Finnish language, at what was unquestionably the toughest department of Finnish language in the world.

The individual series of lectures I remember best was professor H.K. Riikonen’s lectures on letters and the history of letter-writing. To me those kind of lecture series with no practical benefit or application represented intellectual freedom, a kind of beautiful impracticality useful for that very reason.