How was my year in Sweden?

This year in Sweden has been more than an adventure. When I arrived in the beginning of August I did not know I would get to know a culture as much as I have done with the Swedish culture.

I chose Sweden because I already had been in Norway during my Erasmus exchange and I really enjoyed the educational system that it is generally used in Scandinavian countries. I knew Sweden had a similar system so I decided to apply for 3 different Universities in the country: Linköping University, Gothenburg University and Lund University. The program that attracted me more was the one at Linköping and I had the luck and honour to be accepted here.

The Master’s that I am currently studying is called Master’s Degree at International and European Relations. It is a two-year master; during the first year, students attend to courses to learn and acquire knowledge on Political Science, International Relations, law and political economy among others, while in the second year, we have the option to either do an internship during the first semester, an exchange semester or staying at Linköping University; the last semester on the second year is mainly focused on the Master Thesis.

During this first year I have attended, I have learnt much more than expected. Now I know all about IR and its theories, Institutions that play a key role in country relationship or how the politics work in the world. In fact, I am sure this is due to the system that Linköping University uses, having seminars based on different topics and discussing in these with all the master partners in order to get more input from different viewpoints. The evaluation was based in home exams which made me work with all kind of documents, which made me learn a lot without even being conscious. When working on a case with different documents in order to complete the work to be done for the evaluation, I consider that you learn much more than just learning something for the traditional written exam, which is normally forgotten after the exam is written.

Therefore, I must say that I am very satisfied with the input I got from the different courses at Linköping. I learn much more than what I expected and I now know how to apply my knowledge on different case studies. I think it has been a vast experience to be prepared for my future working on an institution or other company.

I have met different people from diverse backgrounds. My class was fully international with more than 20 nationalities in a 30-people class. We all come from different studies such as Political science, tourism in my case, translation, law or even natural sciences. This gave us a fully diverse perspective to analyse all the case studies during the courses.

Moreover, I must mention the high quality of some teachers at the time of giving class. Each of them had a unique way of approaching the topics and I liked this since we could learn separate ways to work on topics. The Master’s director has been very helpful during the entire year; he was the lecturer in many subjects and he was there to help us with any administrative doubts or problems.

Apart from all the academic stuff, I was part of ESN Linköping (Erasmus student network), which made me meet more people, both Swedish and International. In fact, I was the organizer of a football cup called Liu World Cup; this was a wonderful experience because I was more in touch with Swedish people because I organized the event together with them. I could have more social life both with ESN and Liu Cup and I would again repeat my involvement in these organizations.

After my experience in Sweden, the balance is very positive and I am looking forward to going back after summer. I do not know where I will finish working after my studies, I am still deciding but I think I will see this after the master’s is finished.

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