The wow factor - week 47

Week 47 must have been one of the most fun, inspirational and giving that any week at school has been ever before. We were told that the week is going to be awesome and that we are going to have very inspirational speakers visiting us, but to be honest, I didn't believe it would really be so different than the other weeks. But oh boy was I wrong.

I went to school on Monday feeling a little tired, like any person would on a Monday morning. Anyhow, I came in a little late and was so embarrassed to walk in 10 minutes behind the schedule, so I just sneaked into the back row quietly and sat down by myself. Before I even had set my focus on the speaker, I was already mesmerized. The way he spoke, the words he said, the stories he told - they all glued my bottom into the chair and my eyes towards the front of the room even more. I was so focused, so inspired and totally taken by surprise. Who was this guy? I had missed the beginning of the class where had most definitely introduced himself and all I knew was the stories he was telling and the encouraging words he was speaking to us.

I made a lot of notes to my phone during the lecture and now that I reviewed them again, I want to share some with you:

- Have the courage to dream, people that dream are happier and more successful

- Write your dreams down, that's the first step in making them come true

- Value and cherish love, because everyone wants to be loved. If people are not loved, they want to be respected, if they're not respected they want to be feared, if they're not feared they want to be hated

- Be brave, don't be afraid of anything and be brave to become better, wiser and stronger

- Muhammad Ali maintained his braveness by repeating the mantra "I am the greatest" to himself everyday

After the lecture I went to introduce myself to the speaker and to thank him for the great, inspirational lecture. I learned that his name was Jaakko Alasaarela and he was the CEO of a company called ZEF. He was also going to take part in the national pull-up competition and according to our teacher he is very good at doing pull-ups. So, an awesome guy! He inspired me and made me think about my dreams and what could I do to make them come true.

After our short conversation after the lecture, it was Jaakko's time to leave and the next speaker to take the stage. Now it was Camilla Tuominen, who was going to talk to us about emotions and also a little about her company Emotion tracker.



Camilla's bubbly and quick-witted personality caught my attention immediately. She smiled and made big gestures with her hands while she spoke to us and was very easy to listen to. Camilla told us her story about how she had quit her job in a company she didn't feel herself comfortable working in and started to pursue her own dreams and interests. She had always felt that it is important to be able to recognize emotions and to process them. That is why she had begun to speak more publicly about emotions to people and why she had little by little developed the idea for her own business.

She pointed out some very important things about emotions, that I wrote down:

- Due to digitalization, recognizing emotions is hard nowadays

- It is important to understand your own feelings in your body, so that you can learn to interpret emotions in others

- Find the things that give you the feeling of fulfillment, don't go after accomplishments, go after things that you are passionate about

- Wish the feelings you experience welcome and process them with curiosity. "It's just a feeling", like Camilla said.

- The most of poor and crappy feelings come from comparing yourself to others and suffering in general is 80-90% caused by your own thinking

One of Camilla's slides - she had drawn all of them by herself!!

I also went to say hi to Camilla, since she was - also - such a positive and inspirational human being. We talked about dreams, feelings, meditation and her lecture and bonded immediately. I gave her my blog address and she promised to check it out, since she grew a little interest towards it while we talked. We didn't have much time to have a conversation, but even the little moment after the lecture talking with her made me very happy. I thanked her for her inspirational words and for her positive personality and took her business card.

On Thursday I wasn't in school, because I was filming a video for another school project. I had let our teacher, Ilkka, know about this and he had given me permission to be absent.

Anyway, such a great week. Wow.

-Laura

Law week

When it comes to law-related issues, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. Yes, I find them interesting and it's necessary to know even a little bit about different laws and regulations, but - to be honest - I find studying law a little boring and maybe too pedantic. I guess it's my personality that reflects on my opinion of law, because I'm more of a "something like that" kind of person. In other words, not so precise.

But despite this little personality description above, I'm not underestimating the need of knowing even a little about law. When it comes to business and especially marketing, it's urgent to know what you can and what you cannot do. That's why it was super nice that last week we had Marjaana (one of the teacher's in our school) teaching us a little more about law. We had tasks related to social media law issues and marketing issues, that each team completed in a group and returned to Marjaana on Thursday. The tasks weren't the easiest ones, but we completed them quite well I think - we used the "Markkinointijuridiikka" book as a little help, since the tasks required it.

The week was different and maybe a little more boring to me than the weeks before, but also very necessary. I think it's nice that we have different divisions during this course and not only lectures about digital marketing or such.

According to Ilkka, this week is going to be very interesting and we are apparently going to have phenomenal speakers visiting us in the class so I'm looking forward to it.

And yes, that's me doing yoga - totally non-related to this blog post, but I unfortunately didn't take any pictures at school this week. Instead, I did a lot of yoga. So I decided to post this pic just so that this post would have a picture in it. Hah.

-Laura

Lecture about blogging

Last week on Monday we had a guest speaker, Ilpo Kärkkäinen, who actually was Ilkka's (our teacher's) friend. Ilpo is a blogger and a DJ and he was there at our school to talk about blogging.
The lesson was mostly something I already knew, since I have written a blog for many years now, but there were some important points, that I wrote down from Ilpo's lecture.

• Keep the momentum going in blogging - just write, it doesn't even have to be public, blogging helps to clarify your thoughts.
• The biggest ways of earning money as a blogger are advertising and selling products
• Show your vulnerability - nobody's perfect.
• Writing about your passion is a great way to achieve your goals

On Thursday we had the first exam and to our surprise, we were able to do it at home. We were provided a link to the exam at the Facebook group of our course and from 10 to 12 o'clock, we were able to do the exam. I was a little nervous about it, but it turned out to be very easy and I thought I did quite well.

Now off to start a new week! This week our team is going to go to the vintage interior shop that we are collaborating in this project with and take some video clips and pictures of the place. We are going to start designing a website for the shop and start to compose some ideas for the social media channels of it.