Jeanette's Exchange to Uppsala University | Sweden
An exchange program really begins the semester before you travel. This is because there is much to plan and organize and, therefore, makes that semester busy. All the jumping up-and-down with excitement and the business can lead to a loss of focus and a desire to be on your way. For me this was quite a serious thing as I was doing a very difficult Law Unit and I had to rather quickly re-focus, after-all failing a unit puts one`s exchange dreams on hold.
But having said that it is also a very exciting semester as one looks at foreign universities, their countries, their courses, and of course their tourism opportunities before, during and after the study period.
My first choice was a university in the United Kingdom. Not only did it offer the best choice of study units for credits (core units), for me it also offered the security of studying in a place I once lived in, so no real challenges to face regarding social and cultural norms, and language. However, there was not an exchange opportunity for me in the UK (at the University of my first choice) and so I was offered my second choice in Sweden. I was at first quite concerned about this, but very quickly got used to the idea of trying something totally new, and facing the challenges it would bring. I am so glad it all happened that way.
After taking care of all the university exchange details, course considerations, speaking to academic chairs regarding credits, and other students who had been to Uppsala in Sweden which was to be my host university, I was then free to dream of all the other places I could visit from Uppsala. As I was putting together an itinerary of travel, for before and after studies, my daughter became excited at the names of places she had only ever dreamed of, and so she decided to travel with me for the 3 weeks prior to commencement of my semester in Uppsala, Sweden, on the 18th January 2015.
We set off on Boxing Day 2014, (seems so long ago now), and visited Dubai, Rome, Vienna, Krakow in Poland and Salzburg.
We had the time of our life, mother and daughter bonding over famous places like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Coliseum in Rome, and the Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg. Wonderful! We parted company in Salzburg with my daughter flying off to London to do a young person’s Top-Deck Tour, which was amazing for her; I don’t think she will ever be quite the same again after all that cultural and social experience; and me to Copenhagen to meet up with fellow exchange student Natalie.
We only had enough time to compare travel notes, talk about future plans, and to get soaked trying to find the famous Little Mermaid statue that resides in Copenhagen. I never found it, but Natalie went back on another occasion and visited it. And so we parted company too, she headed off to Kalmar and I headed off to Uppsala.
Now I have to confess that I found the next week extremely hard and stressful. Arriving on the same day as hundreds of other exchange students meant utter chaos at registration, and arriving after dark (easy to do as it gets dark so early in the winter), to an empty apartment with no food and no internet rocked me. I am not sure which one bothered me the most. Venturing out to find food was interesting and not without a few feelings of dread, as everything was covered in snow and not easy to find one’s way around. I was sure I would not remember my way home and get lost in the forest which surrounds my accommodation and never be seen again.
However, I survived and in hindsight most of the stress of those first few days was brought about by my trying to be on-top of everything too quickly, so much so that after a short time I was showing other students how to get bus passes, get a library pass and most importantly an after-hours pass for the university buildings. At 4.30pm everything locks and the only way in to buildings and rooms within buildings is with a pass and a pin number.
My classes commenced on the Monday, 18th January – two days after arrival. The Masters Unit in which I was enrolled was very intense. It was full-time Monday to Friday and delivered in 8 weeks and worth 15 credit points. On the Friday of the 8th week the exam was held, which was a new experience being a take-home exam. The exam is emailed to you and one has 8 hours to complete it. It is totally done on-line everything being returned to the Professor via email.
I struggled with this Unit because I lacked the basic undergraduate experience in ecology and genetics, and I didn’t understand the math’s program that was being used or the complicated computer work done in Excel. I was only travelling with an IPad, which I could not use to do the Excel Activities in class, and this was a real problem for my learning. However, I persevered and with the help of other students, and hours spent in computer labs, I managed to pass the unit. In the 9th week we had a wonderful field trip to Norden’s Ark on the west coast of Sweden, which is a zoo which undertakes insitu breeding of endangered animals.
At the Ark we presented our projects on an insitu program currently being undertaken in the world, and I presented the Western Swamp Tortoise of Western Australia which was received with enthusiasm.
Ironically, I have just completed my registration of units for semester 2 at Murdoch and they are Ecology, and, Genetics and Evolution, both of which have the missing information that I so desperately needed for the Masters Unit in Conservation Biology.
Compounding the workload of the first two months were the other two units I was enrolled in, which were evening courses, because each commenced whilst I was doing the 15 credit point unit. So I was totally overloaded, but knew if I could just keep up, once I got to the end of 9 weeks, I would have lots of free time to revise, catch up and refocus on the remaining two courses both worth 7.5 credit points, and running until the end of the semester.
In Uppsala I was living a half an hours bus ride from the center of the city, near a big immigration town called Gottsunda. I had a very nice apartment all to myself in a quiet location which is exactly what I requested.
Because classes started straight away for me, there was no time to attend any of the welcome events; I even had to miss a lecture to attend the official exchange welcome. There was also very little time for socializing. On the other hand my friend Natalie down in Kalmar was experiencing the exact opposite. With much less demanding courses she had the time to do the whole welcome program, make friends and settle in and have loads of fun. This bothered me enormously, until I realized that I would not like to be doing all that socializing, especially when she said she was having an Australian Day Party and cooking for her friends. Well that sorted me out, I came away to get away from cooking and cleaning and looking after other people so I became content to be different from her and most of the other exchange students. Most of my time was spent with my fellow Masters students. These students, even though some are international, are different from exchange students, because they are determined to achieve their Master’s Degree with the best possible results, and studying is vitally important to that end.
I managed one weekend away, and really shouldn’t have gone, but Natalie and I had such great plans to see and do so much. We met up in Gothenburg, Sweden and stayed two nights in a boat hotel in the harbor. It was amazing, and I needed the break and the chats and the laughs that we had that weekend.
Uppsala the fourth largest city of Sweden is the oldest center of higher education in Scandinavia, the University of Uppsala being founded in 1477. It is a very beautiful city with many famous buildings and landmarks.
Carolus Linnaeus, one of the renowned scholars of Uppsala University, lived for many years in Uppsala and I visited his house and garden, as well as many other famous buildings including the Gustavianum with its famous anatomical theatre, the University Hall and the University main library Carolina Rediviva.
Shopping in Uppsala was an interesting experience with a few mistakes being made mostly in the purchase of dairy products. After a few language lessons in Basic Swedish things improved and we were no longer coming home with sour cream for milk and questioning where the eggs came from.
One of the other units I did was, of course, Basic Swedish. I was very reticent about doing this course, but so glad I did. Once we had some basic words down pat, shopping and travelling became so much easier. I had the time to really study hard and passed the unit with 86%, which I was pretty pleased about. The other unit I did was Sustainable Design, Ecology, Culture and Human Built Worlds, which was very interesting and I enjoyed having the design element in the unit. This unit culminated in the students, working in groups, presenting a design project for a sustainability problem at the Sustainability Fair. This was assessed by an examiner. The fair was open to the public, and so business people seeking inspiration for sustainability problems could attend. It was an exciting day.
One of the highlights for me in the second half of the semester was going away for 8 days to Europe (Paris, Switzerland, Rhine Valley, Amsterdam and Bruges). Natalie and I had talked about going to Paris for Easter, but her courses didn’t fit for such a long break, and so we spent Easter on Gotland Island with another friend, and I did the tour in Europe on my own.
The European Tour was an escorted tour, so from day one I had 40 new friends, one of which I was sharing a room with. Fortunately we got on like a house-on-fire and had the most amazing time together. Paris was adorable and the Jungfrau in Switzerland, an absolute delight.
As soon as the Sustainability Fair was over, and our reports and individual insights were completed I was free to fly off somewhere, and I chose Norway. I arrived in Oslo and after two days took the Bergen Railway, the Flam Railway and a Fjord Tour, eventually making my way to Bergen. Wow. This was not expensive and so very close to Sweden, just a really good thing to do. It was not an escorted tour; hotels were arranged as was all other ticketing, and it didn’t take long to meet other travelers who were doing the same tour, and form friendships.
Natalie’s courses went deep into the semester and as a result she was not free to leave as we had planned on the 7th June. With a few days spare I decided to do an overnight Viking cruise from Stockholm to Aland in the Baltic Sea. This would enable me to enjoy all of the Stockholm Archipelago. This was totally amazing. I would recommend this to everyone; it was the cheapest food and accommodation in the whole of Scandinavia. The overnight cabin was 11 euro! And I had it to myself with all facilities. It was a totally awesome experience and included discoing until the wee small hours and a champagne breakfast, not to mention hours on deck absorbing the scenery.
During the time of my six months in Uppsala I also made several trips to Stockholm, after all the capital city of Sweden is only 71 Km to the south of Uppsala. It is a very pretty city with lots of museums and I visited several. Of course Sweden would not be complete without the cultural experience of visiting the ABBA Museum, and this I did with Natalie. She came up from Kalmar and we met and spent the day together; and of course supporting Eurovision.
But all good things must come to an end, and so on the 11th June, just a couple of days before the expiry of my rental agreement, I left the sunny sights of Sweden. Yes, the sun came out and brought summer with it the week before I left. And would you believe I saw the very images that were in the Uppsala exchange brochures that set my heart racing when I finally came to terms that I was off to Sweden.
However, luckily for Natalie and I, it was not quite the end of this wonderful time in our lives. We met in Copenhagen, where it had all begun for us six months previously and together headed off to Greece for three weeks. This was our reward to ourselves for studying hard and both achieving 30 credit points towards our Undergraduate Degrees at Murdoch.
Well, it could almost end there but in fact we flew out of Greece in the early hours of Sunday morning 28th June arriving in London to the news that the Greek economy had collapsed and the banks were shut. How lucky was that. But alas, time to say goodbye, two trains to catch both going in the opposite direction, Natalie jumped on hers heading to Central London and I jumped on mine heading to Cambridge.
I wasn’t quite done yet. Having lived in the United Kingdom for ten years back in the eighties, I had many friends to catch up on. Well as many as I could fit in, in fourteen days. I visited and stayed with friends in Cambridgeshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire, Cornwall, Devon and in London. Phew, I was wined and dined and treated like royalty everywhere I went. What an experience. I arrived home in Perth on the 14th July, 2015.
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