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CHAPTER 4

The Day that Changed My Life

SCHOOL WAS NOT A PROBLEM FOR ME, SO I was pleased to see in the newspaper an announcement that Atlantic College, an international school on the coast of South Wales, intended to recruit some Finnish pupils. I knew at once I wanted to go there. The following day the Rector of the High School, Olavi Niemi, stopped me in the corridor and suggested that I apply. I told him that I’d already sent off for the application forms. I wasn’t sure I’d get in because the college required language skills and other qualifications, but I was sure I would do well. In March I submitted the papers to the Finnish Cultural Foundation, which ran the selection process in Finland. In April ten promising candidates were invited to an English-language interview in Helsinki. I spoke stuttering school English. I had never been abroad. I had never used the language anywhere. I had heard people speak English on television, but otherwise I knew nothing of international life.

On the last day of April but one I rang the Finnish Cultural Foundation. I asked if I’d been accepted. The telephone tingled in my hand as I was told that I had. I would leave for the Atlantic coast of Wales the following autumn. My heart jumped for joy. I told my parents the news and they congratulated me. My father slapped my back. My mother conjured up a dinner excelling even her high standards. That meal, which started at five, lasted for hours as we discussed everything that lay ahead. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

I didn’t know then that the whole course of my life had changed. But looking back I’m absolutely certain that it did. Some seemingly random events do change the direction of our lives. We don’t realize it at the time, only in retrospect. My acceptance at Atlantic College was precisely such an event.

Atlantic College was established to bring together students from different countries to study together for two years. The school was academically ambitious: gifted pupils were chosen on the basis of references and interviews to see how well they would fit in. This year two of us from Finland would go. A stipend from the Cultural Foundation would cover our tuition costs. You could also reach the school by a different route: rich parents could pay the school fees, but their offspring still had to pass the entrance tests. Atlantic College was thus a combination of a high-pressure school and an international organization that was trying in the 1960s to educate the first global generation. The experiment was not a bad one, and in my case at least Atlantic College achieved its goals.

In the summer of 1967 I awaited with mounting excitement the journey to my new school. In Vaasa strange stories were circulating of what the future held for me. The cause of the greatest amazement was that I would not sit my school-leaving exams at the prestigious Vaasa High School, but would move to somewhere in Wales, wherever that was. This seemed to upset everyone’s deepest feelings. My mother, too, was in her heart sad that her eldest child would not graduate from high school in his home town.

After a flight on a Finnair Caravelle I arrived in London, where I took the train to the industrial town of Bridgend in Wales and then went by bus to Atlantic College. The school had chosen for its location a gray mediaeval haunted castle that had stood guard for centuries. Around the ramshackle castle there was a sprinkling of new buildings where the students lived and worked. The area was surrounded by fields where sheep grazed. Around the castle was a garden with well-tended slopes sweeping down to the sea. The Atlantic’s endless horizon floated above the bright green meadows and dark green trees. Fog rose from the sea and a cold wind blew, though there was nothing new about that for anyone from Finland. The new landscape blew my mind. This was a different world, bigger than Finland. The sea was sea here, too, but it was bigger than the Gulf of Bothnia, which I knew had only Sweden on its other side. Here whole new continents awaited conquest from this strip of shore. Here I could see as far as my eyes would let me.

The library in the arched vaults of the castle took my breath away. So many interesting books, so much to study. My curiosity was already boiling over with the thought that I would get my hands on all this new knowledge because of the great opportunity that by chance – in the form of a newspaper announcement – had come my way.

We Finns were an ambitious crew who had started coming here only the previous year. So we had to show the others that we could handle it. In previous years the Germans had been the best-performing nationality in terms of academic grades. We decided it was now the Finns’ turn. The brightest star in our group was Pentti Kouri. Pentti was two meters tall and brimmed over with self-confidence and a broad general knowledge – his results were the best in Atlantic College’s entire history. I saw a good deal of him over the years. He became a brilliant macroeconomics expert, and also a venture capitalist who had varying success. His self-assurance and genius brought him not only friendship but also envy and enmity. Pentti got me ever more interested in macroeconomics. Other students included Martti Salomaa, who became a gifted physicist and mathematician and later professor of theoretical physics at Helsinki University of Technology. And Seppo Honkapohja went on to hold the chair of macroeconomics at Cambridge University and sit on the board of the Bank of Finland.

The Finns at Atlantic College in 1968 (from left) Pentti Kouri, Martti Salomaa, Mika Reinikainen, Eero Nurminen and me.

At Atlantic College no one spoke of a profession they might follow or what the future might hold; but it was clear to all that our future would in some way be academic. Hardly any of us imagined we would become captains of industry, bankers, or leaders of political parties. We were simply enjoying our exploration of the Milky Way of knowledge.

Four boys slept in our dormitory. The metal-framed beds practically touched each other, so we had to learn to put up with the odors and customs of different cultures. I quickly learned who washed their feet and who didn’t. I myself was the same conscientious boy I was growing up in Finland. I wanted the room to be kept straight. When I was sent a food parcel from home, I made sure all my roommates received a share. Some of my new friends came from a similar background to mine, such as my Norwegian roommate. Others came from so far away that I really had to come to grips with a new culture. For example, Lu Pat Ng came from Malaysia, where he belonged to the Chinese minority. If I had not met him when I was young, I would certainly not have gained the understanding I needed later of how things worked in Southeast Asia.

Atlantic College made its students study hard right from the beginning. Every student had to specialize in three subjects: I chose economics, physics, and mathematics. In all three subjects I would be able to use my mathematical gifts. Economics had begun to interest me back in Vaasa – my brilliant teacher Raimo Teppo had made the subject seem fascinating. At Atlantic College it became my passion because there too we had an outstanding teacher, Andrew Maclehose. He made me look at the links between economics and economic policy. He made us put ourselves in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s place. We had to decide: was this the right time to devalue or not? I enjoyed this enormously. My self-confidence grew: I learned that with every piece of knowledge one might influence the world. Knowledge was power.