Krista Tevilin is a 25-year-old Mathematics major who is also just about to graduate from the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences where she’s been studying Emergency Care. Here she tells us how she manages her busy schedule and why she thinks emergency care and mathematics go well together.
You are studying Mathematics at the University of Helsinki and Emergency Care at the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. How did you end up studying two such different kinds of fields at the same time?
I kind of drifted into it. After high school I got in to Mathematics but I had dreamed of studying Emergency Care for a long time. However, when I got in to Metropolia I couldn’t give up my studies at the University because I enjoyed studying at Kumpula so much, it’s very easy to feel at home there. Mathematics was also a kind of a back-up plan for me in case I wouldn’t have liked emergency care after all.
How have you managed to schedule your two degrees?
Scheduling has probably been the most difficult thing I’ve had to learn. Of course, one of the degrees has become the priority one and since Emergency Care requires compulsory attendance and Mathematics doesn’t, I’ve pretty much focused on that and maths have been more in the background. However, teachers at the University have been very flexible, which has been awesome and has helped a lot. So if I haven’t had too much to do with Emergency Care, I’ve studied more Mathematics, but when I’ve had a lot of work experience or things like that at the Metropolia, I’ve had to take time off from the Uni. Of course, if you have good friends who can send you their lecture notes, that will help you a lot! I wouldn’t have been able to do nearly as much without their help.
Tell us a little about how your two majors differ from each other. For example, how does your typical day look like at the University compared to a day at Metropolia?
They are like day and night! At Metropolia we don’t have a set timetable but the days vary a lot. Sometimes we have lectures until noon and the rest of the day we will do some practical things like lab work, or sometimes we have simulations that last for the whole day. But it’s very school-like – we have the same group of people that we study with all the time. And then of course we have a lot of work experience during our studies. Whereas in Maths we have more mass lectures: some days we have a few lectures and then some calculation practices. As for how they differ from each other as subjects, I think it is refreshing to change between them every once in a while. In some ways, when you study Emergency Care, your priorities change and you realize that your own problems aren’t really that big. But on the other hand, people aren’t exactly rational all the time, so sometimes it’s relieving to go and study Maths, which is a really rational and exact field. They balance each other nicely. And that’s probably the reason why I study both of them.
What are your plans in the future? Where would you like to work after graduation?
That’s what I’m trying to figure out myself as I’m going to graduate from Emergency Care this Christmas. At the moment, I feel like I’d really like to try out the whole ambulance thing. But I don’t think it’s impossible that I would, at some point, find myself teaching either Maths or Emergency Care, or then combining the two in some governmental work. Or if I get fed up with Emergency Care, I might become a financial mathematic! Of course, you have to take into account that working in emergency care is very demanding both physically and mentally, so it’s nice to have a back-up plan.
Would you recommend doing two degrees at the same time for others?
Well, I don’t know if I can exactly recommend it because it’s not easy in any way. But if you are good with scheduling your work then it will of course round out your education and skills. In Emergency Care, however, you can almost certainly find a job after graduation and it’s been easy to find summer jobs in your own field since the beginning of studies. If you want to do two degrees at the same time, you just have to accept that one degree will become a priority and the other will be more in the background.