The old saying ‘a job well-planned is half done’ is true also of studying. Planning helps you to direct your efforts and use your crucial but limited resources – your time and energy – in a realistic and sustainable way. Careful planning gives you a sense of command and makes it easier to get started.

Of course, good planning needs to be paired with action, and the main purpose of planning is helping you get to work. You should think of planning as a tool that can be used in many different ways. 

The two key areas of study planning are goal-setting and scheduling.

Goals

When setting goals, we try to answer the question: ‘What do I want to change and how?’. In other words, a goal gives us something to aspire to and focus our attention on. 

A goal may be something you want to attain, such as a course grade or graduation. These are referred to as performance goals. They are tied to academic performance and the desire to be a good student. Such goals are often associated with good grades. 

Learning goals are related to an in-depth understanding of a subject matter and the ability to put this knowledge to practice independently. Focusing on learning goals makes studying rewarding in itself, which in turn increases your interest and motivation and thus allows for in-depth learning.

Both performance and learning depend on your own actions, and the third type of goal is a behavioural goal, i.e. when a certain behaviour, action or activity is important and worth pursuing in itself. Behavioural goals can also be seen as tools for achieving higher goals: they often lead to learning and desired performance.

You can also have avoidance goals. They reflect your desire to avoid failure, stress or an unpleasant feeling evoked by studying. Avoidance goals often lead to academic underachievement.

How to set beneficial goals?

• Preciseness: Define exactly what you want to achieve and break a large goal down into smaller milestones. Try to formulate the goal into a concrete action plan that you can start implementing right away.
• Measurability: Consider how you will know whether you are achieving your goals. Concrete monitoring of personal progress increases motivation.
• Feasibility: Take into account your true inner reserves, the time available and other resources. Set genuinely feasible goals.
• Meaningfulness: Is the goal important to you and consistent with your values? Is the goal set by you and if not, are you able to see the meaning behind the goal set by someone else?
• Time-limited: Set a deadline or other limit for achieving the goal to help you to stay on schedule.

The quintessential purpose of time management is not maximising efficiency. Efficiency is useful as long as it is an instrument for achieving a goal and not a goal in itself. Time management and efficiency make it possible for you to devote as much time as possible on matters that are important to you. It is therefore a matter of prioritisation. 

University studies require careful planning, as you simply will not have time to do everything. The studies are demanding, and estimating the time required to learn something or study independently is often challenging. This is why you should have some room for changes in your schedule. In other words, the key is estimating your time use and leaving room for adjustments if needed. If some courses take up more or less time than others, your time use should align with the course workloads.

When you are a student, your schedule is easily filled by leisure time events, work or everyday routines and chores. Travels between home and campus may take an unexpected amount of time. Identifying your time thieves may be the first step towards a functional schedule.

If you have a lot of work to do and do not pay attention to your time use, you may not have enough time for rest and recovery. Even pleasant things can put a strain on you. On the other hand, delaying and avoiding things and getting stuck in excessive inactivity and idleness is also stressful. 

The best way to recharge is to do something totally different from the things that are causing stress, which is something to consider when planning schedules. To recover from stress, you need balance and variety.

If you find that you spend your inner reserves on thinking and focusing during the day (as students often do), the best way to unwind is to do something creative or collaborative. We all know how sitting still for a long time starts to feel tedious and boring (and as such, stressful). The best way to recover from hours of sitting is physical exercise. Busy times need to be counterbalanced by peace and quiet, while lengthy periods alone can be balanced with meeting other people or spending time with a pet.

It’s good to plan your schedule as a student at the daily, weekly, and teaching-period levels. 

Habits form the foundation for our everyday use of time and energy and thus for achieving results. Sometimes not getting things done in studies can be a habit. You may spend all your time on hobbies or sitting in front of the computer, taking part in student association activities and hanging out with friends. If this continues for long enough and regularly, there is a risk that not studying may become a habit. The habit of not studying may also be something that you have picked up in primary and secondary school if you did well in school with minimal effort.

At first, the habit is a conscious choice, but with repetition it becomes unconscious and automatic. Habits are a way for the brain to save energy: automation saves you from conscious decision-making, freeing up brain capacity for other things. Without habits and routines, you would have to consider even simple things every time you do them. In the best-case scenario, a habit becomes a familiar, safe and rewarding way to reach a goal that is important to you. 

Habits depend on situations and other contexts: a specific location, time, emotion, person or a recent incident works as a cue that causes certain automatic actions. This combination of cue and action results in a reward of some kind, such as the feeling of pleasure or relief, or the achievement of a goal. Rewards reinforce and help maintain habits, whether good or bad. Some rewards are unconscious. Sometimes the reward maintaining the habit is the avoidance of difficult or unpleasant things.

Habits that work are very useful and help you in goal attainment, making studying easier for you. Useless or harmful habits may be easy to identify, but still difficult to get rid of.

Changing your habits

Consider this all-too-familiar scenario for many students: While you are studying, you reach for your phone and get absorbed in it for a good while. This behaviour recurs repeatedly and becomes at least partly automated and difficult to stop despite its obvious negative impact on your focus, study, and productivity.

First, try to identify a habit you would like to change, in this case excessive phone use. 

Second, recognise the reward: is it the funny memes on social media, social interaction via messages, or escape from tasks that bring up difficult emotions? Next time you feel compelled to follow the habit, try some other reward, like walking outside, chatting, or having a snack. If you notice, for example, that going for a walk works as well as scrolling on your phone, you might think that taking a break from doing anything is the reward in itself. 

The third step is identifying the cue that makes you pick up your phone. The next time you feel you want to take out your phone, pay attention to what happens in the situation. After a few days of paying close attention to your own actions, you will probably recognise the cue that triggers this behaviour for you. Maybe you are trying to complete a difficult task but do not know how to proceed. For many of us, being faced with difficult tasks can give rise to feelings we wish to avoid.

Once you have identified your own ‘habit loop’ you can make a plan to change it. You know the kind of tasks that make you want to grab your phone. Plan ahead what to do differently in such situations in the future. You could take up an alternative action, like going for a walk, and then consider what could be the smallest step forward with the task at hand.

Sometimes changing a habit may require knowingly influencing our exposure to cues. For example, changing your study location from home to campus might prompt different habits. It is also a good idea to link habits to one another: having your morning coffee at the library may make it easier to get into a studying routine. 

Remember that new habits do not become automatic overnight. When you first form a habit, it requires more energy and effort. Failing to follow the habit is also normal, both when you first start forming the habit and later on. With habits, what you strive for is not perfection but consistency in the long term.

To achieve anything, you need to be able to concentrate on it. Concentrating means focusing attention on the desired matter, ignoring distractions and directing your attention back to the task at hand when your mind starts wandering.

Today, so many people struggle with concentration that the term Attention Deficit Trait (ADT) has been introduced. It describes a behavioural pattern that resembles attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but is not an actual disorder that could be diagnosed. ADT arises when you have had too many stress-inducing elements in your life for an extended period of time – hurry, multitasking, constant interruptions, uncertainty and inadequate recovery times. Such long-term strain can cause chronic stress that makes learning, remembering and concentrating more difficult.

A particular challenge for our ability to concentrate are smart devices: according to a study, keeping a smartphone on your desk, even if unused, significantly impaired your ability to concentrate. The ability to concentrate is highly dependent also on factors like the amount and quality of sleep, alertness, stress and mental well-being.

Of the more permanent personal characteristics, the combination of being impulsive and easily distracted and bored tends to predispose a person to unproductivity. Students with this combination of features are ready to jump from one task to the next and get bored when working on the same task for a long time. It is easy to imagine that, for such students, persisting with a task until completion can be difficult and require a lot of practice. On the other hand, when active and impulsive individuals channel their often high levels energy appropriately, they can be remarkably productive. Sometimes these traits may indicate an underlying attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). If you think you may have ADHD, please contact healthcare professionals, such as the Finnish Student Health Service (FSHS).

You can also improve your focus by practicing: get to know the Concentration Training online course developed by Aalto study psychologists.

Delaying something means postponing it even when you know it is important or useful. Delaying can be strategic and useful, or it can be self-defeating.

Strategic delay refers to a situation where you deliberately leave a task for later. For some students, doing things at the last minute gives an energy boost and helps them to focus and thus complete the task. Other times, delay is a deliberate prioritisation strategy: you postpone the starting of a task knowing the task will be completed when your schedules and inner reserves allow. Strategic delay can thus be a viable strategy. However, even those who employ strategic delays might benefit from learning alternative ways to get things done, as unexpected circumstances can always arise. Especially for large and long-term project-type work, delaying may not be a workable strategy.

Self-defeating delay or procrastination is often unintentional. Usually, study-related procrastination takes the form of last-minute studying for an exam, turning assignments in late or using the time reserved for studying on tasks that only seemingly promote studies such as polishing your notes, organising files or making meticulous to-do lists. Procrastination might bring temporary relief, but in the long term, it is often associated with anxiety, irritation, regret, hopelessness and self-blame, not to mention its effect on studies.

Procrastination can be seen as a kind of self-protection strategy, a way to preserve your self-image as a capable individual. When you do not even try to study or study for an exam only on the night before, you can think that failure is not due to your capabilities. And on the other hand, if you do succeed, you can think that being able to succeed with minimal effort is proof of your capability. While the strategy is effective in self-preservation, it weakens your performance. 

Researchers have suggested that the underlying reasons for procrastination include low self-esteem, low self-efficacy and fear of failure. This means that harmful delaying or procrastination stems from difficult emotions linked to the self and studies, which the student might unknowingly attempt to avoid. Procrastination can be a form of avoidance behaviour. Avoidance behaviour means any kind of activity that seeks to completely evade a situation or emotion. You might attempt to avoid a difficult matter altogether due to fear of criticism or failure, anxiety, or even feelings of shame.

Procrastination can also be due to challenges with executive function or a distorted perception of the time required to complete a task. 

Moving past avoidance and procrastination

Identify and acknowledge: Try to identify whether you are dealing with strategic delay or procrastination. If the relief is short-lived and quickly replaced by stress, your avoidance behaviour is likely to be harmful. If, on the other hand, you remain calm and the delay is planned, you are probably making use of strategic delay.If you recognise that you are engaged in harmful avoidance behaviour, take a moment to consider what makes the task unpleasant for you. Does it seem too vast, complicated or unclear? Are you afraid of not doing well?

Lower the threshold: Difficulty in starting often has to do with having to deal with a complex or vast combination of things that is in reality impossible to do in one sitting. You might also have a black-and-white idea of studying: either I learn all of this right now or I do nothing at all; either I understand this completely or I cannot ever learn this. As such beliefs make it difficult to get started with studying, you should strive for good enough rather than perfect.Another way to lower the starting threshold is to set goals that are attainable and well-defined. Break large tasks down into smaller ones and assign a limited time to each of them. For example, instead of vaguely ‘working on the essay’, open the computer, open the file, write the title, write bullet points, and so on. Even small steps forward strengthen your motivation.You can also try the five-minute rule: Decide to work for five minutes and give yourself permission to stop after that. Focus on the task as well as possible for five minutes. Then decide whether you will continue for another five minutes or stop. Often it becomes considerably easier to carry on with the task after the first five minutes.

Eliminate distractions: Minimise distractions in your study environment. For example, you can try putting your phone as far away from you as possible for a few hours at the beginning of your study day and observe how that affects your studies.Distractions may also be caused by the computer. When you first begin your university studies, you should think about how you will organise your study-related files. Close unnecessary browser tabs, and if necessary, copy the notes and text segments into a blank file for working on them.

Prioritise: It is impossible to devote the same amount of time and energy to all university studies. Therefore, you need to weigh which studies are important and interesting and spend time on them. If everything on your to-do list seems equally important, you can feel overwhelmed. Prioritisation helps you focus on the essential tasks and reduce procrastination.

Create routines: When getting started is challenging, you cannot rely solely on motivation. You will make progress in the task if you work on it often enough, even little by little.

Aalto offers an excellent online course to support getting things done.

Before the course starts and you begin independent study towards it, you should get to know the topics and intended learning outcomes of the course. You can find information on them in, for instance, MyCourses. When you understand the intended learning outcomes, it is easier to focus on key themes and set goals for yourself.

Some courses have prerequisites, i.e. certain skills or knowledge that you are required to have before you can register for the course. Furthermore, sometimes it is recommended that courses be taken in a specific order, as previous courses lay the groundwork for subsequent courses.

When you get a good overview of the course, you can reflect on its connections to your broader curriculum and degree structure.

If the lecture slides are available beforehand, you should browse through them before the lecture. While you do so, you can write down any questions you hope to get answers to during the lecture and, if necessary, clarify the meanings of unfamiliar or in particular, foreign-language terms.

If the study material includes a book, you should first check the table of contents and consider whether some topics are familiar or completely new to you, and which chapters are crucial for the course.

When you prepare for the course like this, you create memory traces for the new information to link to. 

Does the course include lectures, group work, calculation exercises or mid-term assignments? What other study and assessment methods can be expected? Different teaching and assessment methods require different kinds of preparation and time use.

While knowledge of the teaching and assessment methods does not actually increase your understanding of the subject being studied, it can help you to understand the course overall, increase your sense of your familiarity and command and thus make learning easier.

If you find that you have knowledge gaps that make learning new things more difficult, it is good to look for ways to strengthen your background knowledge. To do so, you can opt to revise upper-secondary courses, take up courses at the Open University or at a local adult education centre, or include relevant courses in the elective studies of your degree. You can develop your reading, writing and mathematics skills also when already studying at the university.

Intrinsic motivation means that you do something because you are interested in the topic itself and find it meaningful. Experimental, playful, and curiosity-driven activities can lead to beneficial consequences, but the consequences themselves do not drive your actions. Someone with intrinsic motivation enjoys learning as well as practising and developing their skills.

Extrinsic motivation, by contrast, is based on the rewards and consequences of actions. In the context of study, these may include grades, feedback, due dates and other students’ or the teacher’s perceptions of you and your work. 

Intrinsic motivation is thought to be linked to better learning outcomes. An intrinsically motivated student focuses on the subject being studied, while an extrinsically motivated one may focus more on the expected consequences. Thinking about consequences can detract from learning and doing, leading to poorer performance. That being said, a student who discovers the value of an extrinsically motivated activity and chooses to commit to it, i.e. uses their free will to achieve an external goal, may perform well regardless of the extrinsic nature of the goal.

Self-efficacy describes the student's belief in their ability to perform tasks and achieve goals. Self-efficacy is at the core of the student’s study motivation and influences whether the student is willing to really apply themselves for the sake of their studies. If your self-efficacy is low, you may perceive tasks as harder than they actually are.

Self-efficacy grows through trial and success. When you realise that you can further your learning and goal attainment through your own efforts, you grow more confident in learning even more challenging concepts. When you meet a self-set goal, you get proof of your skills, which boosts self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is influenced by your past experiences of learning, feedback and evaluations. Typically, when you do your best and succeed, you receive encouraging feedback from others. This external affirmation supports your sense of self-efficacy and thereby reinforces motivation.

Sometimes feedback can be negative despite one's efforts, which undermines your experience of self-efficacy. In such instances, it is crucial to remember that every attempt, whether successful or not, gives insight into your skills and areas for development.

How to strengthen self-efficacy?

• Gradual progression: Set goals that are easy to achieve and focus on succeeding in them. After this, you can gradually increase the level of difficulty of the goals.
• Use your strengths: Find ways, methods and places to study that suit you. Do you prefer to study alone or together with others? Do you prefer to dive into a book or watch a video? Do you start by establishing the big picture or build your understanding around a familiar detail?
• Commitment: Keep the promises you make to yourself. Each time you fail to do something you have decided to do, you weaken your sense of self-efficacy.
• Note the successes: The brain and mind tend to notice threatening things much more accurately than pleasant ones, meaning that they are skewed towards worries and troubles. You may need to practise recognising success. 
• Put failure into perspective: Try to look at failures as a natural part of the learning process. Failures provide insight into our skills and on aspects that we still need to focus on. 
• Reframe strict negative thoughts: Instead of ‘I know nothing about this’, think ‘I do not know about this yet.’
• Pay attention to rest and recovery: Tiredness and stress can have a negative effect on your sense of self-efficacy.

University education is, in principle, self-directed and gives you a great deal of autonomy: it is up to you to decide on your goals and priorities, most of your course choices and your use of time. In fact, your sense of autonomy is gradually strengthened as you make these choices, evaluate them and your learning, and let your actions be guided by these self-evaluations.

This is not to say you get to do everything exactly the way you want. Teachers need to be able to verify that you attain certain intended learning outcomes. In a higher education context, autonomy refers to the student’s experience of exercising free will and working independently. The student chooses to commit to their studies and seeks to understand the reasons behind the teaching and advise provided and not feel controlled through them.

Some find the increased responsibility for studies stressful and struggle in making use of the autonomy they have. If you are accustomed to being guided by your parents or teachers, you may feel unsure about making independent decisions. Similarly, self-directed study may be complicated by conscientiousness and perfectionism: if you have a tendency to try to do everything, and do everything perfectly, you may end up not exercising your free will to make choices. Self-directed activity may also be hampered by learning difficulties or attention deficits.

How to strengthen autonomy?

• Find the meaning in your tasks and work: Think about what you learn from them, what skills you practise through them and what their role is in the larger context of your studies. You can always ask your teacher for advice.
• Lead yourself: Practice planning and scheduling your studies. Set goals that are meaningful and important to you.
• Move away from coercive thoughts: Note the ‘musts’, ‘shoulds’ and ‘have tos’ that you tell yourself. Find alternative ways to word your ideas: ‘It would be good, because...’, ‘It is worthwhile, because...’.
• Choose rather than react: Sometimes your emotions lead you in a direction you do not really want to go. After all, it is possible to choose to do even challenging things even if the initial reaction in the face of difficulty might be to give up.
• Focus on the things you can influence. Especially in the case of adversities, you should focus your energy on the things you can affect, instead of trying to fight a losing battle. While you cannot change your feelings or other people's reactions or actions, you can choose how you act in a given situation.
• Do what works for you: There is no one right way to study at university. You know from experience how you learn best, achieve goals and hold on to what is valuable for you.

People who feel connected to others and part of a community are happier and more motivated to engage in activities, and this of course is true of students, too. The need for connection and belonging is one of the strongest foundational needs and building blocks of intrinsic motivation. 

When you feel you belong to a group or community, you want to participate and do your best. Students who know each other are also more likely to help each other academically than students who do not know each other. This also works the other way around: Students who help each other are more likely to become friends. 

Getting to know other students and making friends within the student community create a safe and inclusive atmosphere where students feel encouraged to participate and to keep trying even when learning is challenging. In particular, taking active part in group work and investing in shared goals have positive effects on the internal dynamics of the group and cause the other members of the group to view the active student favourably. Mutual respect, collaboration and interaction make studying more meaningful, while evoking interest and reinforcing learning. This, in turn, strengthens the sense of self-efficacy, which is likely to lead to even better participation. This way, the sense of belonging, studying and motivation create a virtuous circle.

How to enhance the sense of belonging and connection?

• Study together: Forming study groups, solving tasks together, teaching each other, dividing the study material among the group, and other ways of studying together not only support learning, but also strengthen the sense of belonging.
• Giving and receiving help: Think of ways to help others. Offer help actively. Identify when you need help, in what kinds of matters, and to whom you can turn. Practise asking for help if you are accustomed to managing on your own.
• Positive feedback: Give positive feedback even on small matters. However, do not overdo it – the best feedback is earnest feedback. Giving feedback is easier when you practice noticing the good and saying it out loud.
• Connection to something bigger than yourself: Consider how the matter studied and the knowledge accumulated through it can benefit the world, humanity and things that are important to you. How can studying help you do good?

In everyday language, it is common to talk about ‘controlling your emotions’. In fact, we cannot choose our emotions or command them, which means we cannot control them as such. Emotions are automatic bodily and mental responses to external events and often to our thoughts. Their primary function is helping us react quickly in different situations. Emotions often also give us valuable information about the situation if we know how to listen to them. 

On the other hand, emotional reactions may be excessive in relation to the situation, in which case they do more harm than good. This is when we need emotion regulation: the ability to affect our emotional state through our own actions. 

Ways to promote emotion regulation

• Invest in sleep: Sleep deprivation makes the brain regions controlling emotions overly active and weakens the connections related to emotional regulation.
• Exercise: Physical activity improves mood, increases pleasant emotions and reduces unpleasant ones. Exercise may also improve your ability to recover from emotional reactions. Good physical fitness seems to help with managing stress.
• Talk: When you talk about feelings with others, you can see that almost every student has had various difficult experiences. When you are overwhelmed by unpleasant emotions, it may feel as if you are the only one going through this, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy and loneliness. If you have the courage to express your feelings, you give other people the opportunity to be there for you, which may make your relationship with them closer.
• Identify and name your emotions: Recognising your bodily responses to emotions and naming your emotions can help you to gain some distance if you are too wrapped up in your emotions. When you can tell yourself, ‘this is fear’ or ‘this is confusion’, it helps you to see emotions as momentary bodily and mental events. 
• Use problem-solving: From the viewpoint of the ability to study, university students seem to respond best to a problem-solving approach, where you aim to identify and modify situations where strong emotions occur.
• Avoid avoidance: Avoiding unpleasant feelings or situations that cause them makes you feel better for a while, but in the long term, prevents you from facing challenges and clearly impairs your ability to study.
• Practice acceptance: Try to make room for all kinds of emotions and give yourself permission to experience them. Allowing yourself to experience emotions might help you to see that even unpleasant emotions are not always as unpleasant as you thought beforehand. 
• Go into nature: Spending time in nature lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones in the blood, and decreases muscle tension. In addition, spending time in nature seems to improve your mental functionality and wellbeing, which in turn promotes emotion regulation. The longer the time you spend in nature, the better the impacts on wellbeing. However, adding even small moments or elements of nature to your everyday life will have beneficial effects on your wellbeing.
• Act despite emotions: We cannot choose our thoughts or emotions, but we can decide on our actions. Our emotions may suggest a certain course of action, but that does not mean that we should follow through with it. Learning to tolerate difficult emotions and having the courage to face situations that evoke them gives you a chance to get positive experiences of your ability to cope.
• Distinguish emotions from facts: It is easy to over-identify with your emotions and think that what you feel is true. While it is important to listen to your emotions, you should keep in mind that our emotions influence how we view the outside world and different situations. Sometimes the message relayed by our emotions is misleading.

Perfectionism is often viewed from one of two opposing perspectives: it is seen either as a virtue driving you to achieve perfection and to dismiss any failure as a sign of weakness, or as universally harmful and toxic. In reality, the truth lies somewhere in between: perfectionism can manifest as either useful or harmful behaviour, and depending on the situation, the same student may resort to either.

Adaptive perfectionism

A student with adaptive perfectionism sets high but realistic goals. Such students are often systematic and intrinsically motivated to study. They are self-directed, and their study style and goal setting allow for gaining successful experiences, thereby strengthening their confidence as a student. Adaptive perfectionism helps you to work hard and persist even when learning requires a lot of effort. Persons with this mindset link success to the amount of work done rather than innate abilities. They see failure as feedback that allows you to learn, develop and adjust their actions in the future. This kind of studying style and attitude towards academic performance supports the ability to study and do well in studies.

Maladaptive perfectionism

Maladaptive perfectionism often stems from a feeling of inadequacy and fear of failure. The student may delay and avoid studying for fear that they will not achieve perfection or get stuck in honing minor details. Students with maladaptive perfectionism set excessive and unrealistic goals, exposing themselves to experiences of failure and underachievement, which further undermines their self-confidence. When they are unable to complete a task, they feel very guilty and inadequate. Maladaptive perfectionism is linked to poor ability to study, burnout, study-related anxiety and depression, and may lead to dropping out of university. 

Maladaptive perfectionism may take the form of, for instance, believing that self-criticism leads to better performance or harshly criticising yourself after failure. Maladaptive perfectionism may also manifest as highly emotional reactions to lower-than-desired exam scores. By comparison, someone who is adaptively perfectionist might feel disappointed, but that would not make them feel that their self-worth was undermined by a single exam score.

Maladaptive perfectionism often involves comparisons with others: it seems that others are coping better despite setbacks. The student may see themself as inferior, wrong or inadequate, tend to dwell on their failures and mistakes, and often engage in hypercritical self-talk. Simultaneously, they may overlook or underestimate their own successes.

Some identify having ‘imposter syndrome’, where you fear that you are incompetent and that others will discover it. A person suffering from imposter syndrome is constantly doubting their accomplishments and is afraid of being exposed as a fraud, even when their success and accomplishments were indisputable. A person suffering from imposter syndrome is not able to assess their abilities or achievements in a realistic way. Often, this phenomenon is associated with a lack of self-confidence and self-efficacy, which causes the person to overachieve and strive for perfection. In many cases, imposter syndrome involves overestimating the abilities of the people around you and underestimating their level of effort. You may think that learning the course contents is easier for all other students than you. This mindset creates optimal conditions for burnout.

How to deal with maladaptive perfectionism?

While it is impossible to simply get rid of self-demanding thoughts, you can change your attitude towards them. When you learn to recognise your maladaptive perfectionist thinking patterns, you can start to adopt new ways to think and act. If you have demanded perfection of yourself for a long time or maybe always, the transition towards a more accepting attitude will take time. Letting go of control can seem unsafe for a while. 

Therefore, it is important to consider the consequences of letting go of maladaptive perfectionism. You may think that letting go of excessive demands will result in idle underachievement and the end of all development. In fact, the opposite may be true: once you learn to let go of perfectionism, you are likely to get more done, more effectively. You will probably be less stressed and find more joy in what you are doing. Receiving feedback will also become easier, as you learn to tolerate incompleteness and errors better through self-compassion and acceptance. You will find that you are more than just your studies, work or other performance. 

• Learn to recognise maladaptive perfectionism. Learn to pay attention to situations where you demand too much of yourself and tend to get stuck in the pursuit of perfection. Sometimes it may be helpful to listen to someone who notices that you are in a rut.
• Acknowledge your successes. Writing down successes and achievements may help you see the results. Try to stop to think about all the things that you have already achieved. You can also change the indicator of success from vague perfection to getting a specific task done by the deadline. Learn to evaluate your work more realistically and to see your strengths. 
• Take time to recharge. Remind yourself that excessive work is harmful not only for your well-being, but also for your performance. We all need breaks on a daily, weekly and annual basis. Make sure you get enough sleep, nutrition and physical exercise. It is also important to make time for other areas of life besides studying. 
• Allow yourself to fail.  Remember, everyone is allowed to fail and make mistakes. Failing and the subsequent feedback should be seen first and foremost as useful information about what we could do better next time. Since we all fail regularly, it is important to learn to live with it and to be gentle with yourself about it.
• Practise self-compassion. Self-compassion means accepting, understanding and gently coming to terms with your limitations and human nature. Self-compassionate individuals set as high goals as others but are more understanding of failures and better at identifying their emotions and dealing with them flexibly. Read more about self-compassion here.
• Speak to yourself as you would to a friend. Sometimes we talk to harshly to ourselves. If you find yourself doing so, stop and think about how you would talk to a friend in a similar situation. This helps you to distance yourself from your thoughts and emotions and to be kinder to yourself. However, your self-talk does not have to be exaggeratedly positive; be genuine and honest.  

You can also have a look at the self-care programme for overachievers on MentalHub.fi (not available in English), where you can find information on overachievement and self-imposed demands as well as tools and means of coping with perfectionism in practice. 

Stress is a common and normal response of the human nervous system in situations where high performance is required. Good stress improves performance, keeps you alert, and helps you focus attention on the essential matters. When the level of stress is in balance, you get the amount of sleep and free time needed to recover. When prolonged, stress becomes harmful, because your alertness level remains elevated between stress provoking situations.

Recognise stress:

• Body: Increased heart rate, tense muscles (e.g. neck and shoulders), shallow breathing, headache, changes in appetite, difficulties falling asleep, waking up during the night, stomach issues
• Thoughts: Constantly thinking about unfinished tasks, increased worrying and rumination with thoughts like ‘I can't,’ ‘I don't have time,’ ‘I don't know how to’ ‘I should not feel this way’, ‘others are more relaxed’ etc. Your thinking becomes narrower, and you lose sight of solutions or new ideas.
• Emotions: Feeling annoyed, frustrated, anxious, irritated, nervous, wound up, impatient
• Behavior: Difficulty in prioritising, being idle or resting; carelessness; jumping from one thing to the next; getting overworked, avoiding tasks.

Stress management

The most effective method of regulating stress is to resolve the matter causing stress. As stress is often created by urgency, piled up task lists, and unclear goals, you should make use of various time management and planning techniques and active problem-solving to increase your sense of control and clarity.

Keep in mind, however, that constantly moving from one task to the next is not good for you. Often stress makes you feel that you have to do something all the time. Even in the busiest times, it is important to take breaks and make sure to have leisure time. You should also pay attention to how you can distance yourself from the things that cause stress and focus on recharging. Exercise, creative work and spending time with friends can be good ways to do this. Different kinds of relaxation exercises may be useful, and research shows that being in nature (or even just looking at trees) lowers heart rate and relieves stress.

Students who lack ways to manage stress sometimes resort to excessive substance use to forget their stress. Excessive substance use can temporarily relieve stress and help you shake the thoughts going around in your head, but in the long run, this solution will backfire. 

One potential source of stress nowadays are the constant stimuli produced by smart devices and news feeds, so you should consciously make time for screen-free activities. 

When does stress turn into burnout?

Long-term stress permeates several areas of life and reduces well-being. As long-term harmful stress can lead to burnout, you should always try to take steps to end it and seek help as needed. Signs of study burnout include

• exhaustion and tiredness, which are not alleviated by normal rest
• cynicism: Studies no longer seem meaningful or purposeful.
• diminished self-confidence and sense of control: You start to feel inadequate and doubt whether you can get through your studies.

If you continue to perform well academically despite struggling to cope, it might be difficult to recognise burnout or your need for rest. Unusual difficulty with concentration and relaxing, having mood swings as well as irritability may all be signs of high-functioning burnout.

Study burnout is often accompanied by anxiety and a low mood. If you have these symptoms, you should reduce your workload. To resolve the situation, you should seek help by contacting either a study psychologist or the Finnish Student Health Service (FSHS)

Most of us are nervous sometimes. For instance, approximately 70% of Finns have experienced performance anxiety (stage fright) at some point. 30% of university students experience stage fright, and 10% of them feel it is serious enough to hamper their academic progress. Women suffer from social anxiety 2.5 times more often than men. 

Anxiety or nervousness, like many other difficult feelings, is a natural part of life. Nervousness becomes a problem when it complicates or hinders performing everyday tasks or studying.

Anxiety related to social situations may be reflected, for example, in the student avoiding oral answers in group situations or withdrawing from courses that require group work. Establishing new friendships or relationships can be difficult, and due to avoiding social situations, students may miss out on opportunities to practice and develop their social skills.

Performance anxiety refers to stress and nervousness related to assessment situations such as examinations or presentations. Even if you are very skilled, you may find it difficult to demonstrate your skills due to performance anxiety. Often your beliefs about the assessment situation and the significance of those situations for you can affect your feelings of anxiety. 

Anxiety is most likely genetic and backed up by an innate temperament trait, shyness. Being shy means being cautious in social situations, which may manifest itself as embarrassment, blushing or difficulties expressing yourself among new people and in unexpected situations. How a person or their environment views shyness is often more harmful than the shyness itself. After all, even a shy person may be socially skilled and a good performer.

Different environmental factors also contribute to the development of anxiety. Especially controlling, harsh and humiliating upbringing methods or socially traumatising experiences in adolescence, such as being bullied at a school, may can predispose you to strong anxiety.

Ways to deal with performance anxiety

• Prepare: The better you understand the topic, the easier it is to speak about it in front of others.
• Focus on what you want to say: When you are anxious, your attention tends to shift to the act of presenting itself (how you look or sound, what the audience thinks, whether you appear calm or nervous). Instead, try shifting your focus to the topic—consider what aspects about the topic are important and note that the presentation is about the topic, not about you as a presenter.
• Direct your attention: Choose someone you know from the audience and address your presentation to them.
• Calm the body: When you are nervous, breathing becomes shallow and quick. Try calming your exhalation by, for instance, counting calmly to four and breathing as you count.
• Think about what you will do with your hands: You canhold notes, place your hands on the table or in your pockets.
• Say it out loud: If possible, you can start your presentation by saying that you feel nervous but are doing your best. If you would rather not say anything about it in your presentation, you can opt to tell a fellow student or the teacher about your nervousness beforehand.
• Distinguish your thoughts from facts: When you are anxious, you can have a lot of thoughts swirling in your mind that are not really true.
• Make plans for something nice: Decide on a nice thing you can do for yourself after the presentation regardless of how the presentation goes.
• Get on with everyday life: After the performance, try to continue your everyday life as usual. 

The FSHS guide, Jännittäminen osana elämää (in Finnish and Swedish only) is an excellent additional material for students whose academic and personal lives are affected by nervousness or anxiety. 

If you feel lonely, you are not alone. According to an FSHS health survey (2024), about 40% of university students feel lonely at times. Nearly 29% of the respondents did not feel part of any study-related group at the time of the survey. Anyone can experience loneliness – it does not mean you are different or wrong.

While all of us need connection to others in our own ways, the need for social relations and interaction vary widely. Extroverted people enjoy company and feel energised by spending time with others, whereas introverts tend to tire more easily when interacting with others and need more personal time and space. Being alone is different from being lonely. 

Loneliness is a distressing feeling of isolation and being an outsider, stemming from unhappiness with the number and quality of relationships. Emotional loneliness means feeling lonely even when you are with other people. In such cases, your relationships lack genuine connection or closeness. Social loneliness means insufficient social networks.

Sometimes it may be difficult to build relationships with people outside the study group for a variety of reasons. If you find it difficult to seek the company of others, for example because of anxiety or low mood, it is worth seeking professional help. You can talk with a study psychologist or contact FSHS.

You can overcome loneliness. There are also ways to work on your sense of loneliness through self-study: For example, Helsinki Missio has a Loneliness Workbook, while MentalHub has a self-help programme on loneliness (not available in English).   

As mentioned above, learning and the ability to study is furthered by all study techniques that promote active in-depth understanding of the subject matter and require consistent, long-term study. Some study techniques have been found to be particularly effective for long-term memorisation and in-depth understanding, where you combine various knowledge areas and seek justification for beliefs. 

One of these techniques is testing yourself and asking advanced questions about the topic and answering them. For example, before attending a lecture or reading study material, you can skim through the topic and ask yourself questions or a take a small test on the area that you would like to learn about. After attending the lecture or reading the material, you can answer the questions and continue to ask in-depth questions on areas that remained unclear and get back to them to after a while. As you do this, you inevitably build an ever-deepening personal knowledge base on the subject. 

Another effective technique is explaining the matters studied to yourself and others. For example, try putting together a lesson on the subject you are studying. You can also teach the matter to a fellow student taking the same course or try to explain it to a friend. This process forces you to think through the topic and clarify its key aspects. It might even spark interesting discussions about the topic, further enriching your understanding of it. 

A third element present in effective study techniques is spacing out your learning over time. For deep learning, it is more useful to study the matter in small portions and to deepen understanding little by little than to study it all at once. For example, if a given topic takes eight hours to learn, the memory trace will last longer if you study two hours a day over four days rather than eight hours straight in one day. That said, a small number of students do benefit from the possibility to focus on one topic without disruption and get immersed in it even for a whole day.

There is often a great deal to learn at university, and one of the important dimensions of an effective study technique is being able to adapt your study technique to suit the time available. Furthermore, you should pay attention to the different course requirements, as well as the variation in teachers’ emphases and assessment methods. You do not have time to learn everything deeply and thoroughly. What is more, a study technique that works on one course might not work on another. This is why adopting a strategic study technique where you adapt your study methods to the teachers’ requirements and time constraints is crucial in university studies.

The starting point for the strategic study technique is finding out what it is that you are intended to learn during a course or assignment before you start working on it. Check the course description or the topic of the individual lecture and write down the intended learning outcomes. After this, map out an overall picture of the topic, e.g., by writing down the topic headings of the course or lecture in your own words or creating a mind map out of them. After this, write down or make a drawing illustrating the themes that you have some knowledge of, those you know well or not at all, and what you might have to spend more time on. Time-consuming as it may be, this strategic planning helps you to get an overall view of the process, thus allowing you to shift your attention to in-depth learning and figure out what you need to learn and how much time you will need to learn it. Ultimately, you will find that this technique saves time, as you can focus on the matters essential for your learning.

Another important element of the strategic study technique is finding out about the evaluation methods and criteria of the course, as both may vary greatly depending on the course and teacher. In some courses, you might have lectures and a final exam where you are asked to write an essay-type answer combining several topics. In such cases, you should practice this type of answering throughout the course by writing notes where you combine different topic areas. On other courses, the teacher may ask students to work in groups and assess each other’s work, while the teacher evaluates the group work output as a whole. In such cases, it pays to invest in group work and contributing to the functioning of the whole group. In a third course, the teacher's evaluation may stress the importance of the weekly calculus exercises, in which case it is essential to invest in them. In other words, find out what the teacher wants you to learn in the course and how they plan to evaluate your learning and adjust your study techniques accordingly.

Bachelor’s and master’s theses are often among the most demanding academic efforts in university studies with a variety of associated expectations, beliefs and experiences. When you start working on these writing assignments, remember that you do not have to know how to write a thesis when you first start the process. When the work is done, you will surely know enough about doing it!

Motivation is typically highest at the start of a new project and again near its completion, but it tends to dip in the middle. Therefore, it’s useful to keep the middle part of the project as short as possible. In practice, you can achieve this by setting several interim goals that you work towards, instead of only keeping your eyes on the completion of the whole project. Interim goals allow you to start working towards a new goal multiple times during the same large project, which will give you the satisfaction of goal attainment more than once.

Check out Aalto's comprehensive guide page for thesis work here.

The core courses of several degree programmes include mathematics. As these courses cause many students difficulty and serve as the foundation for advanced courses in several fields, mathematics study is addressed here as a separate topic.

Mathematics is the language of science

The study of mathematics may be likened to the study of languages: first, you familiarise yourself with new concepts and their meanings and go through some examples of their use, after which, you proceed to exercises, gradually progressing from superficial learning to a deeper understanding of when and how certain concepts may be applied.

Use pen and paper

Since mathematics is a visual language (rather than, e.g. a spoken one), various visualisation techniques and writing methods support learning. In other words, it is worth taking out a pen and paper when studying mathematics. Writing by hand activates the neural networks more widely than typing on a computer, allowing you to learn and remember better. 

Nowadays, computers are used increasingly often also in upper-secondary-level mathematics classes. Writing formulas and drawing graphs is possible but laborious on a computer, and the student’s own work of visualising may be skipped altogether.

In the language of mathematics, each symbol has a distinct meaning. Sometimes students opt not to write symbols to save time, but it should be noted that leaving out even a single symbol can change the meaning of a mathematical statement. In other words, you should write each symbol down on the paper and include all the intermediate steps you need to grasp the calculation.

Memorisation and deep understanding

At university level, the understanding of definitions and concepts gains new importance compared to previous levels of education. The goal is not to simply solve calculations mechanically, but to understand why the calculations are made and what the solution means in practice. Understanding the definitions forms the basis for understanding larger concepts.

Of course, mathematics always involves a certain amount of memorising. Similarly to language studies where you memorise words to make constructing sentences simpler, in mathematics, memorising the derivative rules makes calculating derivatives much smoother. However, the need to memorise plays a smaller role than you probably think. 

An in-depth understanding is especially important when you use a computer or calculator to perform the calculations. A solid understanding of the underlying logic allows the student to analyse whether the solution is purposeful or not, and why a solution does or does not work. In other words, students are expected to gain an abstract understanding of the topic as well as skills for analysis and independent thinking, none of which can be expected from software or calculators. 

Get your basic study skills into shape

When studying maths, it pays to get a good command of the basics. If you lack some of the rudiments, it may be hard to complete a basic maths course when you enter higher education. If you find it difficult to follow basic course lectures or do calculation exercises on your own, it is probably worth working up your ability to do math operations like reducing fractions, knowing the order of operations, and solving problems involving exponentiation, logarithms, trigonometry, and derivatives.

If you are used to having a pocket calculator or software do the calculations for you, you might lose confidence in your own ability to understand the basics and find the solutions. It is good then to stop and remember to give yourself time to learn the new things. The brain requires time to organise and store new information (referred to as ‘memory consolidation’). In practical terms, this means taking breaks and having times when you can reflect in peace.

Difficulties may also arise if, after extensive breaks between math courses, you end up needing math skills that you haven’t used for a long while. Like maintaining other abilities, math skills need to be refreshed and practised from time to time. If your last math class was a long time ago, it may help to review your previous learning before diving into the new.

Mathematics learning is built up on previous learning, and many courses that will come later in various subjects, rest on the foundation of previous math courses. With a good command of the basics, courses that come later will feel less challenging. It is therefore important to identify what you really know and understand; then go about connecting and building the new knowledge on top of that. If you only want to get the right answer to a math question without understanding why it is the right answer, what have you actually learned? The good news is that mathematics can be learned – even if it sometimes feels difficult.

Resources for practising and strengthening math skills

• The university offers an upper secondary school (high school level) refresher course in mathematics. Start by creating your own user account and then you can view the assignments with the course key Math25exe.
• Pikku-M: for reviewing upper secondary school mathematics. (in Finnish only)
• Matikkastartti: a refresher package on the key topics of upper secondary school maths as well as a Differential and Integral Calculus 1 course (in Finnish only)
• The mathematics tutoring lab (Laskutupa) can help you solve maths problems and exercises.
• Johdatus todennäköisyyslaskentaan ja tilastolliseen päättelyyn(introduction to probability calculus and statistical reasoning) online course.  The basics of probability and statistics clearly explained. (in Finnish only)
• An interactive mathematics site with learning material to support university studies. 
• Stanford University's ‘Introduction to Mathematical Thinking’, a concise online course. 
• You can also ask lecturers questions during class or by email, if necessary.
• Artificial intelligence can be a useful study companion, especially if you use an AI tool that not only gives ready-made solutions, but asks you questions and makes you think about the problems yourself.

As artificial intelligence, or AI, has very rapidly transformed the everyday lives of students and teachers, it is crucial for both groups to consider how AI can be used in ways that genuinely further learning. Independent thinking is the foundation of all learning, so we should think about ways to use AI to expand our thinking, not replace it.

Many students find it helpful that AI is available for assistance whenever and as often as they need, and various AI tutors can be useful in independent study. AI can help you understand materials in a foreign language or plan a large writing project. It may also make it easier for you to get started with writing or check your spelling and grammar.

One benefit of AI is that it performs routine tasks quicker than humans. Ideally, you could get AI to perform all the repetitive tasks, which would allow you to focus on creative thinking. 

Nonetheless, it is worth remembering that learning requires repetition, effort and active processing. This leads to a potential hidden drawback of using AI for studying and learning: if AI does the thinking for you, you will skip a crucial phase in learning: all the independent effort needed to understand and acquire new knowledge. Demanding course assignments, such as group work, essays, problem sets or coding assignments, are designed so that you will have to process what the topics studied, which can sometimes be very hard work.  The main point of course assignments is not the output produced but the independent thinking and processing that goes into producing them. 

AI produces information in a very concise and finalised form, which means you may end up doing very little of the type of mental effort that genuine learning requires. Even high-achieving students may inadvertently do themselves a disservice if they rely too heavily on AI. The heavy use of AI may give you an illusion of effectiveness in the short term, but as time goes on, your subject-matter knowledge and ability to assess the relevance of information may suffer.

Large language models in particular are based on statistical probabilities. Simply put, they evaluate which word is most likely to follow another. This means that rather than giving the most accurate information and furthering deep understanding, they provide you with an answer based on calculated averages. If you want to use applications based on large language models to support your study and learning, make sure to ask well-defined questions.

It is also important to remember that AI tries to give you exactly what you ask for, even if your original request was based on false assumptions. If you ask AI to explain the interconnectedness between different matters, it will do so even if it has to hallucinate the connections. As a result, fact checking and ensuring the factual accuracy of the prompts remain your responsibility. Unfortunately, students seem to trust the texts produced by AI without much criticism. In fact, critical thinking and source criticism may be even more crucial than ever before.

All in all, what you learn is largely dependent on your attitude towards and view of the subject you are learning as well as on your learning methods, including the use of AI. If you are someone who strives towards a deep understanding of the subjects you study, you are likely to use AI in ways that support deep learning. 

More tips on using AI are available here.

Higher education institutions, like many other expert communities, aim to build up their common stock of intellectual (knowledge-based) capital, solve common problems, and generate new knowledge and ideas. University students should focus not only on increasing their own knowledge and skills, but also on learning the skills needed to build knowledge together when working in an expert community. The more challenging the problem, the more collective brainpower is needed to solve them. 

Working together is also beneficial for the individuals: with others’ support, we can learn things that we would not have if left to our own devices. Teaching others is also one of the best ways to improve one’s own learning, particularly long-term. This is probably because teaching requires actively retrieving and processing information from one’s own memory (or ‘active recall’). Teaching others can also be a nice change of pace to studying alone. An example of working together is to divide the content of a large coursebook with others, then each person teaches the rest about the parts they read. This can promote learning, lighten the workload and make studying more rewarding.

Group work skills

Much of the work done at university is group work. Group work evokes a diverse range of emotions; these are related to our different beliefs, which in turn affect how we relate to and participate in group work. Think back to your different experiences of group work. What have been your best and worst experiences?  Why have some group work projects gone well and others have not?

Whenever you interact with people – including in group projects – you are also dealing with emotions. If you do not know the group members, it may take some time for the members to learn to trust each other. It is also worth making a conscious effort to get to know one another and to build trust, as this will help the project run smoothly. When a group has an open and safe ambience, its members dare to express their thoughts and ideas, ask for help if necessary, and communicate honestly about challenges they face.

At the beginning of a group project, it is also worth taking a moment to discuss the goals of the group and the ways that the work will be performed. If these things are not discussed openly and the members have very differing goals and motivation levels, confusion and friction can be expected as the project goes on. Through open discussion, goals can be agreed upon that the whole group can commit to, and the enthusiasm of the most motivated students might also rub off on others and inspire them to get onboard.

Roles should be assigned explicitly, and the responsibilities can also be rotated. This helps to ensure equal treatment. Sometimes the most confident student in a group becomes the project’s leader and may fail to notice how they are taking space away from others. A shy student, on the other hand, may many good ideas, but they don't dare to bring them up. Important skills for group work include active listening, encouraging others, asking questions, active participation, and taking part in joint tasks.

Almost every group undergoes conflicts at some time. Conflict in itself is not necessarily a bad thing: It may bring about needed changes and help the group to come up with solutions. However, conflict can mean the end of a project if the conflicts are not addressed, emotions are stifled, and situations are avoided, or if disagreements, disappointments and frustration are expressed in a passive-aggressive manner. In conflict situations, it is essential to listen to everyone’s point of view, be aware of others’ feelings, identify differences in views, and actively try to solve problems, prioritising solutions that can benefit everybody.

Check out the comprehensive package of tools for group work here. The material is particularly suited for multidisciplinary teams, but the exercises can be used for any group project.

Every student probably has times during studies when learning something feels challenging. In such times, do not hesitate to turn to your fellow students, teachers or counselors. Many things can be too difficult to learn alone, which is why the university has resources for students like e.g. the maths tutoring labs (laskutupa), where you can get help with math problems. It's important to remember that going to such a lab for help doesn't mean that you are a failure. Rather, it shows you possess the important ability to ask for help.

Although you may think that requesting help is like bothering others, it can be taken like a sign of trust and confidence in the person you asked. Requesting help also gives the helping person an opportunity to deepen their own skills. Helping others, when born of goodwill, can also strengthens the helper's inner motivation.

Giving feedback can also be a form of helping. A teacher’s feedback is meant to help students make progress and develop. Feedback can tell you what is already going well and what you should focus on next.

Some examinations have public feedback sessions, and these understandably may provoke a wide range of reactions. The reactions depend on both the person giving the feedback and the attitude of the recipient. In such events, remember that feedback is always related to the work performed, not the person who performed the work.

Students can also give much feedback during their studies, regarding courses, for example. It may also be necessary for a student to give feedback to other students, as in a group work situation.

Principles of constructive feedback:

• First, ask what the person themself thinks about their performance and listen to their point of view.
• Begin your comments with the positive feedback, given in a clear honest manner. Taking note of positives first can create a common outlook and prepare the other to receive critical feedback.
• The focus of the feedback is the outcome or activity, not the person or their individual traits or character.
• Present critical comments in a carefully focussed and productive way, preferably in the form of a question such as ‘Could this idea be elaborated with practical examples?’
• Let the other person decide how they take the feedback into account.

The time of studies in a student’s life offers many opportunities for getting to know others and networking. Networks provide support and help not only for studies, but also later in working life. 

Sometimes students feel a pressure to show the ability to make friends quickly in all kinds of social situations. It's important to remember that being social doesn't mean that everyone should be the same. A person may be very social and skilled at networking even if they are shy, for example, or just prefer being in smaller groups.

The purpose of networking is not to get to accumulate the largest number of contacts and acquaintances. The point is rather that you can find those new acquaintances who you really ‘sync’ with, or with whom you share similar thoughts about future projects, for example.

Networking can be promoted by participating in mentoring programmes. Aalto’s Career Design Lab organises an annual mentoring programme for master's students and doctoral students. There is also the Aalto International Talent Programme, which is aimed at international students and held once a year.