Political science students in Finland: a vignette

Last week in class with the political science students, we were having a series of discussions in English on topics relevant to their major. One group's topic was Western intervention in Syria. There were six Finnish students in one group I was listening in on - all freshmen, in their first year of studies at the university.

One student started talking about Turkey and its role in the Syrian conflict (specifically this plot twist). He started to talk about the president of Turkey, but couldn't recall his name in the moment.

In almost-unison, the other five members of the group immediately chimed in to help: "Erdoğan."

It was just a passing moment, but in that moment, I felt like: how cool is it to be sitting in a group of six random students and know that, should you ever forget the name of the president of Turkey, they've got your back?

(I was going to end this blog post there, but then I remembered yesterday in class when I was listening to a student talk about his essay on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and another student asked him, "what do you think the role of the Treaty of Trianon was in all this?" and I was like "..." but the student was like, "well, of course its impact was multifaceted..." I was so impressed.)