This summer has been an absolute whirlwind! I feel like I just left for Sweden only a little while ago, and now classes start again in less than a month!
For this final blog post, I’ll be talking about my growth and takeaways from my whole experience. I don’t think I could ever sum up all the things that happened, but I’ll give my best overview.
Although I have been living on my own for college, this felt like a different level in a way. My parents were significantly further away, so I felt like I had to manage on my own a little more. That, combined with being in a different country that spoke a different language, made the start of the experience intimidating in a way.
I got extremely lucky with my roommate, though! I honestly don’t know how I would have managed without his friendship. In that sense, I’ve realized how much I need my friends to get through life. I realized that I might have been undervaluing some of my friends, and that I really should reach out to them more to hang out and get a coffee (or something like that).
Another way that I was lucky was that I already knew a fair bit of Swedish. I know that I had an easier time compared to many of my peers because of it. The experience also gave me an amazing opportunity to practice a lot of my language skills! I feel like my language abilities significantly improved, especially in listening and some aspects of more formal language (the metro announcements always used the formal versions of words).
The whole experience also helped me realize what I want to do in my life. Although I did enjoy the work that I did in my internship, I had time to think about how I wanted my career and academics to go continuing into my junior year. My roommate, who is doing a film degree, also got me thinking about focusing on what I love rather than just what I think would give me more financial stability. While I wouldn’t mind going into Public Relations, I know the stress and competition can be fierce in the field. I realized that I want to focus more on my Linguistics degree and possibly aim to get a PhD in the field after I graduate. Obviously, this would take a lot of work and wouldn’t necessarily be less stressful, but I have also loved linguistics since early high school. I think the effort would be worth it for me, and this study abroad has helped me realize it.
In that same realm, one of my biggest takeaways is that I need to do what I like and find important. One of the worst moments of my internship was when I was tasked to us AI to make a website for my supervisor. I am generally deeply against AI, but I tried my best finish the assignment. All it taught me was that I need to be able to stick to my morals in my work just as much as my personal life to be able to do my best.
Overall, I understand now why people describe their study abroad as “life changing”. Although I still find the sentiment a little exaggeratory, I understand why people say it. The people I met and things that I saw and did will stick with me for life, I think. I know I’ll be going back to Sweden, but I’ll never really have experiences like I did this summer.
(Title from song Andromeda by Kent, a Swedish artist)
