Korpijaakko

This is a shortish update post about my future plans as what the tomorrow brings will also affect the blog quite a bit.

The midsummer is now gone and it's time to see what the tomorrow brings...

At the moment I am working in a university and among other things I am doing my master’s thesis in industrial management. The thesis work will be completed in some point in autumn but I’ll quit my work at the faculty already at the end of July to start something new and different because at the moment I’m not too interested in the typical career possibilities of M.Sc (tech).

The Student's Guide for 2011-2012

As I already told in Twitter, I have got admitted to a Wilderness Guide school program last week. In the spring I applied in the school, had entrance interview on June 13th and some time ago got the information about being accepted in the program. The school is located in the Northern Karelia about 250 kilometers from Lappeenranta where I live now and I will be spending the weeks in the school’s rooming house. The program is arranged by Pohjois-Karjalan Koulutusyhtymä in Niittylahti near Joensuu. I will be taking a 10 months long basic training (Erä- ja luonto-opas koulutus) to become a qualified wilderness guide. It is the same degree that Hendrik took in Kuru’s IWG program. But there are differences between schools and programs and Niittylahti seemed like the most interesting option for me as there is bunch of interesting courses that give additional qualifications on top of the guide qualifications e.g. white water rafting, rope climbing and the very interesting WAFA course.

The school will start in the beginning of August – a week after the two one-week-long packrafting trips in Lapland – and we will be spending the first week of the school in the bush so I expect to be quite busy for that time… And the schools schedule in general looks quite tight and in addition I am planning to squeeze in one long winter trip at some point so I will be probably busy for the whole year. In addition I will lose my sweet 100 MB internet connection so the school will probably have some affect on my blog too. But I have no plans to quit blogging, there just might be occasionally some longer periods or radio silence. But hopefully there will be also more interesting stuff to write about during the year…