Lara Maassen spent the past six months studying in Finland, a country known for its excellent education, for students who show up to class despite it being -25 degrees outside, and who spend the evening knocking back vodka and singing folk songs. But Finland also taught Lara a lot about Dutch student life. Here she shares her top three revelations.

#1 Dutch students aren’t as rude as people think
In the Netherlands, lecturers often complain that students should be taught “manners”, but no such hierarchy exists in Finland. Students are on a first name basis with their lecturers and professors. “Moi Mattie.” (“Hi Mattie.”) Instead of a platform to showcase the lecturer’s knowledge, lessons are discussions in Finland. It’s perfectly normal for students to evaluate their lecturer’s in extreme detail at the end of the semester, prompting an apology email from the lecturer for all of the mistakes he or she made.

#2 Dutch lecturers give extremely low marks
I returned home from Finland with a transcript full of tens, and I wasn’t the only one. If you stick to the rules of the assignment, why should you be punished for the few mistakes you made? According to the Finns, there’s no point in having tens if you never dole them out. They don’t understand why you would specify how insufficient a student’s performance was. Bad performance calls for a bad grade and good performance calls for a good grade. It’s as simple as that.

#3 Affordable booze is easy to find in the Netherlands
Low marks aside, we have it pretty good in the Netherlands. A beer costs two euros here (instead of seven over there) and you don’t have to pay three euros to check your coat at a bar (and trust me, you need your coat in Finland). You don’t have to take a boat to Estonia to buy five bottles of affordable vodka, you can just pick up a crate of beer at the supermarket – even after nine at night, which is when the Finish liquor department closes.