Top 10 Most Read Stories from 2018

We are most excited for 2019. But before we go ahead, let’s look back at the best and the worst from the previous year. We’ll save you from the worst and keep it for our own learning, but share with you the most valuable stuff on our blog from 2018. Here come our most popular stories for your reading pleasure:

1. Doctoral Students’ Stories – Reasons to Undertake the Journey

Doctoral students share their stories, victories, and challenges. Full disclosure: gathering positive stories turned out to be a much more difficult task than finding negative ones.

Marriage vs the Ph.D.
Marriage vs The Ph.D. Author / Source: PhD Comics

2. How to start writing – the most useful tips!

Learn about the typical myths to postpone writing, two golden hours, tips on how to stay focused for these two hours, why you should share your first draft with supervisor or co-authors rather sooner than later, setting priorities, and “snack” writing.

3. Honest advice from current international students

The University of Tartu took part in an international student survey. As a part of the survey, our international degree and exchange students could give advice to new students. Here’s what they said.

…don’t be scared to make this decision

Here's to tough decisions
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Five Life Lessons from Tartu

It has been already more than 6 years since I graduated from University of Tartu 😱 It’s a cliche to say that time flies, but I can’t find in my dictionary a better phrase to describe it. I remember it as if it was yesterday, as well as all those questions and hesitations of my friends about going for master’s studies to a place that very few people recognised 😬 It’s mostly because many of them were taught in schools to recite all Baltic States in one breath: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia… Well done, sit down!🏅

What the heck, lets go to Tartu! 🚌

I may say that it was my natural curiosity that drove me to Tartu. On one side, yes. On other side, I had a strong feeling that understanding historic and economic relations between the European Union and Russian Federation would make much more sense in a post-Soviet state 🤔 I can’t imagine a better place to understand both sides than to explore those relations on the border of both worlds. In addition, I knew that I had to make a student exchange to Russia, no matter what. Not doing it would be like learning coding without touching a computer.

The Arch Bridge and the Town Hall Square in Tartu

Going to Tartu was like a crash course before getting involved in business matters between the East and the West of Europe. It prepared me for undertaking my first real job on the edge of Europe and Russia. Image credit: Riina Varol / Visit Estonia CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

What studying in Tartu taught me? 📚

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4 Researchers, 6 Questions about Christmas

I chatted to four University of Tartu researchers on Twitter about their  Christmas. Please meet Senior Research Fellow in Botany Aveliina Helm, Professor of Philosophy of Language Tuomo Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, Professor in Information Systems Marlon Dumas, and Professor of Jazz Music Iñaki Sandoval.

While Aveliina Helm’s Christmas seems to be traditionally Estonian, the rest of the company’s holidays are as international as their backgrounds. What unites them all is a hearty Christmas dinner with family or friends, as well as doing some work during the holidays.

Let’s see what our researchers’ Christmas look like.


What makes it feel like Christmas for you?

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Scientists Explain Why You Should Get a Real Christmas tree for Your Room, Not a Plastic One

Christmas tree, experiment

Siim Salmar cuts pieces off a plastic Christmas tree to put them into a solution. Image credit: Kristjan Teedema

It’s that time of year again, when decisions about getting a Christmas tree are being made. In Estonia, there are many possibilities: not to have a Christmas tree altogether; to buy a spruce or fir from the square in front of a shop; to find a place on the map by the Estonian State Forest Management Centre (RMK) and go get your own Christmas tree from the forest; or to get a tree from a forest that you own. And then there’s the last resort – an artificial Christmas tree.

Estonian families have traditionally brought their Christmas trees from the forest. Children would hop on the sleigh and then the journey to the forest would begin, with finding a spruce (or a fir) in mind. It was sometimes a bit crooked or faded, but still your own Christmas tree, grown on Estonian soil.

Made in China

There’s nothing Estonian about an artificial Christmas tree. The main producer of Christmas trees made by PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is China. Even when the label says that the tree is produced in the EU, one can be sure that the PVC material comes from China.

Recently, Tartu Postimees brought a brunch of a fake Christmas trees to the lab, where Siim Salmar, an associate professor of organic chemistry at the University of Tartu, made the necessary analyses to discover a little about its chemical nature.

chemistry experiment, christmas tree

A plastic Christmas tree branch went through a series of chemical experiments. Image credit: Kristjan Teedema

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Eduardo from Mexico Adores Arvo Pärt and Eerie Estonia

Seven years ago, Eduardo Torres was studying violin in Mexico and wanted to become a composer. An opportunity to study music abroad for a year came his way, but Eduardo’s first choice wasn’t Estonia. In fact, he didn’t even know where it was located. However, he somehow remembered that Arvo Pärt, whom he discovered at the age of 14 or 15, was Estonian. So he thought: “Okay, let’s go to this place and figure out if there is something special about Estonia that makes his music so wonderful.”

That’s how Eduardo found himself at the Gustav Adolf Gymnasium in Tallinn. During that first year in Estonia, Eduardo met his first love in Tartu, which pretty much defined his experience with this town.

Eduardo Torres

Eduardo on the steps of the Gustav Adolf Gymnasium in Tallinn in 2018. Photo from a private collection


Eduardo with friends

Eduardo with friends. Photo from a private collection

There was also another encounter of the greatest importance; namely, Eduardo happened to see Arvo Pärt in St. Catherine’s Church in Tallinn. He confesses: “I was shocked because he was so close to me. In that moment I decided that if I were ever to talk to him, I would do it in Estonian.” That’s how Eduardo learned Estonian in no time. And, well, he did get a chance to talk to Arvo Pärt!

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How To Mourn Properly on Facebook?

The social media platform Facebook has a problem, and it is not just about the privacy measures or safety of users. According to calculations made by scientists, in a couple of decades the number of dead Facebook users will be greater than the number of living ones.

After a the passing of a close one, modern people have another thing to take into account, in addition to funeral planning and all kinds of paperwork: What to do with the remaining social media account?

In times when social media and all the communication happening in this domain are becoming a more and more significant part of our lives, expressing grief, as well as the topic of death in general, has become a much more usual thing to encounter while visiting social media portals. Annika Maksimov, who studied journalism and communication at the University of Tartu, wrote her bachelor’s thesis about grieving on Facebook.

During her research, she conducted interviews with Facebook users who had lost their friends, and following that, expressed their grief on communication portals by themselves, or had seen others do so.

Because of the sensitive nature of the topic, Maksimov picked the people to interview from the circle of her personal acquaintances.

“A warm and trusting relationship with people making up the sample helps to decrease the risk of my study causing them some emotional or mental damage,” she explained.

Küünlad

Researching grieving rituals is a sensitive topic that should be approached with care. Image credit: Thomassin Mickaël/Flickr Creative Commons 2.0

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Dream Job or Not? Part II

The adventures of Eveli, Head of International Marketing, continue… For Part I, look HERE.

Day 5 – Bishkek, Kyrgystan (1)

The flight leaves at 5 am, so we do not get much sleep. We make it to the hotel by 9 am, but the check-in starts at 2 pm, which means that we finally have (very sleepy) time to go properly sightseeing! The general impression is that they really love monuments – these are everywhere. There’s even a massive Lenin and a man carrying a horse! While looking for the  statue, we were accidentally standing next to a government building and obviously the security guards were not into it, so they approached us to ask what we wanted. Katya explained to them that we were looking for a man carrying a horse and you could hear them laughing behind us for a long time.

Photo: The best monument in Bishkek (Baatyr Kaba Uulu Kozhomkul)

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