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Express yourself freely through entrepreneurial studies

4.9.2020 | Student experience

Film and TV students Jenita Laine and Jonna Ahvonen share their experiences and benefits from Building an Entrepreneurial Portfolio -course.

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Pauliina Waters

pauliina.waters@milcon.fi

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A flexible way to transform your practical experience and working skills into credits

The idea in Building your Entrepreneurial Portfolio is to collect and develop your own entrepreneurial skills, by reading books or attending events, to name a few, and then report your learnings. The choice is yours!

You will get all the support you need from the HUBS coaches, so you won’t be alone during this course. Depending on how extensively you want to collect and develop your own skills, you can get up to 20 credits from the course. At the end of the course, you discuss and reflect your learnings through dialogue. You can also carry out the course with a friend!

Expecting more courage and confidence

Jenita and Jonna mention, that because their industry of work is heavily focused on entrepreneurship, they wanted to get as much information on entrepreneurship as possible, so they decided to dive deep into Building an Entrepreneurial Portfolio. Jenita was a bit unfamiliar with entrepreneurship since she didn’t have any entrepreneurs in her inner circle. Jonna on the other hand has some experience in entrepreneurship since her father has been an entrepreneur for the past six years.

The students expected that the course would bring out their strengths and weaknesses regarding entrepreneurship. They wanted to build ground for their entrepreneurial journey through the course, by gathering information on helpful contacts, for example when founding a business. Jenita and Jonna also mention that they wanted to get some courage to start a business, and confidence to survive any hardship.

Diverse content as a tool of learning

“We have been dreaming about owning a business together, which drove us towards HUBS’ courses”, says Jenita and Jonna. They structured a plan about how to execute the studies, with a schedule to keep up the pace. The students decided to do the full ten credits, so they could gather versatile content.

They attended a few seminars, organized by Ensimetri, which they wrote reports about. The students also utilized courses offered by CampusOnline, where they focused on their strengths, weaknesses, and self-development and establishing their own business, what it takes and how to start to structure the basis of their own business.

In addition to these, Jenita and Jonna read three books, that focused on entrepreneurship and their own interests and wrote reports about them. The students mention the book Heaven + Hell (Finnish: Taivas + Helvetti), where they got the courage to reach their own dreams.

From challenges to something positive

Jenita and Jonna faced a few challenges while doing their entrepreneurial portfolio. A few seminars they found interested and wanted to attend, were only for entrepreneurs. Also, an event suited for their line of study got canceled.

The corona pandemic gave some more trouble since they couldn’t finish their podcast. In the end they did found their ways to replace these “losses” and read some more books. The students didn’t mind these challenges, since they found new solutions and could make diverse content for their entrepreneurial portfolio.

Finding entrepreneurial strength together

Jenita’s and Jonna’s curiosity towards independence, freedom, and responsibility reflected in their studies in Building an Entrepreneurial Portfolio, because they got to choose freely how they want to do the course.

“One of this course’s strengths is that we can choose how many credits we want to do and how, so we got to make the studies express who we are”
Jenita Laine and Jonna Ahvonen
4th year students of film and tv

In addition to this, they say that “every student, regardless of their field of study, can get a lot out of this course by planning their studies in the way they can benefit in their own field of study.”

Jenita and Jonna liked how the course was very independent. The possibility to do the course together gave them strength. They are planning on starting a business together in the future and doing the course together was very beneficial for them.

The students urge other students to give the course a chance, even though the independency of the course might be a bit questionable. You can meet up with the coach of the course, depending on your own needs, or do the course with a friend.

The most fun thing they mention while doing the portfolio was their podcast: they could talk and reflect on their learnings and share a new point of view. And they had fun!

From entrepreneurial portfolio to practice

Many things from this course have stuck to the back of Jenita’s and Jonna’s heads, for example where to contact when starting your own business, where do you get funding and other support systems offered to entrepreneurs, and overall where to start when it comes to being a business owner.

The students also planned their own path of entrepreneurship, which helped find out when is the best time to start their business. Courses that were part of their entrepreneurial portfolio, taught them to know and find their own strengths and weaknesses, and how to develop their own skills and features towards entrepreneurship.

From this course, we got the courage, confidence and certainty to the fact that we have what it takes to be an entrepreneur and we can move towards starting our own business.
Jenita Laine and Jonna Ahvonen