Armaan Hooda spent one day as a math professor in Aalto

Armaan Hooda, where and what do you study?

I graduated from the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme at SYK (Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu). I’m currently taking a gap year and after that I will begin my bachelor’s studies in computer science at the University of Cambridge. My plan is to start preparing by taking open university courses from Aalto and the University of Helsinki, both computer science and math.

I come from India, and I’ve lived in Finland for seven years now. I haven’t needed Finnish much in my studies or with friends. I understand Finnish to quite a good extent – I can’t speak it though. I’m a family-oriented man, and my parents work in Finland. Thus, the plan is that I’ll most probably come back to Finland after studying abroad and live with my family because, at the end, that’s what matters. The work-life balance is pretty good in Finland and therefore, I also plan to learn Finnish this year.

What was the schedule of the day like?

I arrived at 9.00, and we had an introduction with Pauliina Ilmonen’s research group from 9.00-10.00. I was able to ask questions about their research.

At 10.15 I had the talk about my TuKoKe project https://youtu.be/6iDjpYMJJfs?feature=shared, which was attended by my mother and brother as well.

At 11.15 I had lunch with Nuutti Hyvönen, the department head.

At 12.15, we attended the master’s degree programme committee meeting until 13.45. It got kind of boring at some point, if I’m being very honest.

At 14:00 we had a meeting with Aleksi Avela, and we were talking about master’s programme, language shifts, zombie project, comma polishing of research articles, and I also asked a lot of questions about doctoral defenses.

How do feel about being a professor for one day?

It was amazing! I saw that a professor’s work is beyond just research and teaching.

I also gave a talk, which was pretty fun. This was the first audience I’ve had for that piece of work that had sufficient knowledge of math to understand what I was talking about without me having to overexplain myself.

What are your most important takeaways from the day?

The profession of being a professor is not just limited to research and teaching, but there is also a lot of administrative things that needs to be done, especially for professors like Pauliina Ilmonen because she’s vice-head of the department too. I wouldn’t want to be the head of department though, because there is so much administrative stuff.

Moreover, being a professor means collaborating with doctoral students, master’s students and other professors. This experience empowered me to consider this profession as a serious possibility for my future.

Since you spent the day with Pauliina Ilmonen, were you allowed to play with legos?

No, but I was tempted to do so. I would have never in my dreams imagined this is how a math professor’s office looks like.