More Exploring, Norwegian Academics, and Free Time

Whoops, I forgot to write that follow-up post regarding the content that I had originally written about and then lost in my previous post… Sorry, y’all. I’ve been busy settling into my life here in Norway, and despite the fact that my phone has been constantly reminding me every few hours for the past week (which is so annoying—why do I do that to myself?) to write that follow-up post, I have not done that. Oh, well. You can’t miss what you’ve never known, so there… But I will be talking about most of that stuff in this post anyway, so you’ll know, ‘ya know?

But anyway, enough of that:

Yesterday marked two full weeks since I have been in Norway. Wow. Part of me finds that difficult to believe, but another part of me is surprised by how confident I am in my surroundings for only having been here for 15-ish days. Most of this confidence probably stems from how much exploring of the city I have been doing in my free time. Norwegian universities have a different way of conducting their courses (compared to US universities), so I basically have a ridiculous amount of free time on a weekly basis. (More on the course structure later in this post; keep reading.) I’ve been using this free time to get out and explore my surroundings. I’ve gone running (and accidentally discovered some beautiful forest trails!), walked around an outdoor sculpture garden, explored Oslo’s waterfront, hiked around an awesome lake, and explored Oslo’s incredible public transportation network. Earlier today I saw an incredible sunset over the Oslo Fjord from on top of a hill, which was incredible! (It’s the featured image on this post; check out the rest of my photos to see more.) And tomorrow I am picking up the cross-country skis that I am renting for the season from the student athletic organization, so I will be able to explore the outdoors like a true Norwegian! Seriously, SO MANY people ski here (and they use public transportation to get to the ski runs too, which is awesome)—I’m excited to have another way to get to know my surroundings while exercising.

Getting back to the academics that I briefly mentioned earlier: for a Norwegian student, 30 credits is typical for a full-time load. Each course is usually 10 credits, so most people take 3 courses (and that’s what I am doing). These credits will convert to 15 standard credits back home at UMN, so it’s equivalent to a pretty typical semester for me, at least in terms of credits earned. However, that’s where the typical part ends. (I mean, obviously this semester isn’t typical for me: I’m 4000+ miles away from home and on a different continent in a different country. Duh.) Norwegian universities are based heavily in independent learning, so there is only one lecture a week for most courses. And then there are a lot of assigned readings (which I’m told are not like in the US where you can usually get away without doing them). There is also no homework in the sense that I am used to. Course grades are based entirely (high stakes, much?!) on a written final exam, a semester paper, or a take-home exam. I have all three of those grading methods between my three courses, so I will get a good sense of Norwegian examination protocol.

So because of this, I only have three classes (and one seminar for one of my courses) once each a week. And my schedule is very compact, so I only have class on Mondays and Tuesdays here… Which is totally insane and not at all what I am used to. At UMN I always have class at least Monday through Thursday, and usually (but not always) on Fridays. Going from five days of class per week down to two has been really weird to adjust to, and I know that it will take discipline and effort on my part to be an effective student in the face of so much free time. But it also brings up an important question: What am doing to do with my free time?

It’s an interesting situation, to say the least. Obviously I am going to be spending a decent amount of this free time on learning the material via the assigned readings. But when I finish those each week, my options are wide open. Which is awesomely terrifying. I hope to spend a lot of this free time outdoors, enjoying Norway’s natural beauty via outdoor recreation. I am also planning on doing a decent amount of traveling throughout Europe—I already have flights booked for Denmark and Germany in February when my sister, Laura, comes to visit! (And I also might go to London next week, which would pretty awesome!) And knowing me, I will also be spending some of this free time watching Netflix. (Lame, I know.)

On a final note, I just realized that I talked about my academics but failed to tell y’all about the courses I am taking. (*facepalm*) As I mentioned, I’m taking three courses. I’m an environmental sciences, policy, and management (ESPM!) major, so naturally the course that I am most excited about is “Environment and Society”. This course will be analyzing the environmental science and the issues around this science from an international, human geographic perspective. Much of my coursework has focused on the scientific aspect of the environment, so I am really excited to be apply to apply this knowledge to view these truly global issues from a global, geographic lens. The two other courses that I am enrolled in aren’t really directly related to my ESPM major, but they count toward the liberal education requirements that I need to graduate from UMN anyway, so it’s cool that I can take them here. These courses are “Norwegian Music for International Students” and “Norwegian Life and Society”. The music course is not music-theory-based, so I am glad about that! And the life and society course will help me to learn about and more completely understand the culture that I am immersing myself in for the next 4 months. It should be an interesting semester, and all three classes have been going well so far!

Well, that’s all for now! There will be another post coming your way within the next seven days. (Heh, that rhymed. :P) Thanks for reading, and check out my photos if you haven’t seen them yet and would like to!

-TJS

Week 1: WordPress Doesn’t Autosave #RAGE

This post was initially much longer (I lost like 600 words 😦 ), but WordPress apparently doesn’t save things automatically, which is insane. So what I salvaged is below. I will write another post later this week covering the stuff that I had already written about but sadly lost when I accidentally clicked away from the “New Post” page.

Whoa, I’ve been in Norway for an entire week. That’s pretty hard to believe, but I own several devices capable of tracking the date, so I believe it. I’ve been very busy getting settled in (my room is no longer the disaster that it was when I wrote my last post), attending orientation events, doing fun activities with my “buddy group” of other new international students, exploring Oslo, and–oh, yeah–attending classes. Here we go:

In all seriousness, the orientation from the University of Oslo was pretty useless. I’m the kind of person who looks everything up. Everything. So there was VERY little information at the orientation events that I wasn’t aware of already. Sometimes being so prepared is boring, but whatever. During the opening ceremony there were some cool musical performances, though, so it ended up being pretty neat.

After orientation, we met our “buddy group”–a small group of 20-something new international students, led by several Norwegian students at UiO. The “buddy group” was my first opportunity to meet peers at UiO, and I ended up enjoying the experience very much. After introducing ourselves, we played an icebreaker (which is no stranger to me as a Welcome Week Leader at UMN) and talked about some of the events that we would participating in throughout the week.

As a group, we played volleyball, went to some bars (and paid $9USD for one beer–welcome to Norway, land of expensive everything), went on a bus tour of Oslo/explored the city, played trivia, visited the Viking Ship Museum, and generally had a great time. It was a really good initial experience to be able to get to know other new international students as well as the Norwegian students who organized the events. I am looking forward to hanging out with my new “buddies” in the near future!

I will continue this post in the near future, talking about what I had explained in my earlier post that I lost: exploring Oslo and my first “week” of classes.

Thanks for reading.

-TJS

Days 0-1: Traveling, Exhaustion, and More!

Well, I made it to Oslo! I’m writing this from my room in the Sogn Student Village near the University of Oslo’s Blindern campus. I am an idiot in that I didn’t have enough willpower to stay awake until a normal bedtime for Oslo’s timezone, which is 7 hours ahead of Minnesota. So I collapsed into bed around 7PM (or I should probably say 19:00—Norway uses 24-hour time) and woke up around 2AM. And naturally, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so bring on the jetlag! I have been up for five hours now (it’s 7:30AM on Tuesday now—technically the second day, but this post is about Day 1), and I figured that I should probably do something other than watch TV shows on my laptop, haha, so here we are.

I said goodbye to my family at MSP Airport on Sunday afternoon after we had an awesome brunch together in St. Paul. If you know me well at all, you’ll know that I have an incredibly close-knit (and large!) family. My parents and siblings are my best friends, and I love them to death. That is probably the thing that I am dreading the most about this entire experience: being away from my family for almost five months. It will be tough, and I know that there are going to be times when I get very homesick, but I plan on communicating regularly with them to avoid this. And my sister Laura is going to visit me in about a month, which is really exciting!

So anyway, after I said farewell to my family, I flew to Paris. I thankfully got a free upgrade to economy comfort (free drinks! 😉 ) from an awesome flight attendant, which was much needed. I barely had enough legroom as it was, so I feel like my normal economy ticket probably would have been miserable. The flight to Paris was pretty uneventful. Watched some TV on my laptop, part of Divergent, started a new book (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed), and slept for maybe 20 minutes, haha. I had a very short connection of 1 hour and 10 minutes in Paris Charles-De-Gaulle Airport, which I have been stressing about for months (seriously, months). I lucked out in that my flight from MSP arrived 20 minutes earlier than scheduled. I also was near the front of the plane, so I was able to get off of the plane and run to security before everyone else on my flight, which saved a lot of time. I managed to get to the waiting room at the terminal I was flying out of almost an hour before I needed to. And then my flight to Oslo was delayed by 35 minutes anyway, so I ended up with plenty of extra time. All that stressing over nothing. Typical.

After landing in Oslo, I immediately purchased some alcohol in the airport (hey, alcohol is super expensive in Norway and duty-free in the airport is the cheapest—don’t judge), picked up my luggage, got some Norwegian Kroner from an ATM, and purchased a train ticket to the Oslo Central Station. I knew that the public transit was going to be good, but I was blown away by how nice everything was. The express train to the city center was hella fast and it was so smooth that it felt like it wasn’t even moving.

After getting to the train station (which is also crazy-nice) I found the meet-and-greet people from the University of Oslo. We waited awhile for some more new international students to show up before we took off on the metro to campus to check in and get our room keys. I met other students from throughout Europe, one from Australia, and one from Chicago, which was really cool. We all commiserated in being exhausted and ready to stop carrying our heavy luggage everywhere with us. (Seriously. I had like 80 pounds of stuff total throughout a huge duffle bag and my two backpacks, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is a disaster to be carrying for several kilometers.)

The walk to the Sogn Student Village is uphill, which I didn’t realize from my Google Maps creeping. By the time I finally got to my apartment (or “flat”, as it would be called), I was drenched in sweat, which was gross, since I had already been traveling for 12 hours, and totally exhausted. I took a shower right away, got somewhat settled into my room (somewhat is being liberal—my stuff is strewn everywhere), and pretty much went to bed immediately, which I am sure that I will be regretting by the end of today.

I haven’t met my flatmates yet, but I think that they are all girls, which will be a kind of new experience. (My sisters are family, so that only kind of counts in my mind.) They probably think that I’m super weird because I just took a shower and went to bed without making any kind of attempt to introduce myself to them, but that was kind of weird to do and I’m not really sure why I did that either. (Note that I haven’t seen any of them—I didn’t see them and then not introduce myself. I’m not a total weirdo.) Whatever, exhaustion makes a person do stupid things.

So anyway, that was my first day(-ish) in Norway. I have orientation starting at 10:30 with a Welcome Ceremony, and I’m excited to get that underway! More soon (with pictures).

-TJS

A Procrastinator’s Tale: T-Minus 15 Hours to Departure

Man, setting up this blog took way longer than I had anticipated. But hey, I find my timing (see timestamp) of this first blog post to be incredibly fitting considering how this entire study abroad process has evolved for me…

Please allow me to explain: anyone who knows me well knows that I am a chronic procrastinator. Naturally, this unfortunate habit expanded to my study abroad decision-process. It didn’t help my cause that I was on the fence to begin with about studying abroad (especially for an entire semester!) and that I love over-analyzing all the details of any major decision into the ground.

Getting back to my point—After I was enlightened to the affordability of the University Study in Norway programs (sponsored by the U of M’s Learning Abroad Center) through one of my good friends and after a third and final change of major, I re-evaluated the feasibility of study abroad. I was shocked to discover that I could make it happen and still graduate in a 4-year timeframe. I spent the next few months trying to decide if I should even bother applying…

Finally, after significant deliberation, I decided to apply, recognizing that there was still a very likely chance that study abroad wouldn’t happen. However, I was also finally feeling engaged, comfortable, and satisfied with my college life, which I viewed from a perspective of having a great fallback if I decided against going. Thus, I wasn’t completely worried about anything falling through.

I submitted my application the day that it was due, having started it the night before in true Tim-Schwarz-Master-Procrastinator form. One of my former professors came through in a moment’s notice–thank you Dennis, you’re the best!–and wrote me a letter of recommendation to complete my application file. I was accepted into the program shortly thereafter and had to apply directly to the University of Oslo (UiO) in order to be admitted. This task was due about a month later. I was so excited and horrified to have an entire month to deliberate.

After driving my friends, family, and self insane for pretty much that entire month, I finally made a decision at the last minute to jump into the unknown by studying in Norway! I applied to UiO with hours to spare and was admitted. (By the way, huge thank-you’s to my incredible family and friends who countered my indecisiveness, insane speculation, and all-around craziness with insightful advice about study abroad–you know who you are. I am truly blessed to have y’all in my life, and I really mean that.)

My excitement has been building ever since I finally sucked it up and made my decision on November 1st. The day has arrived to leave the United States (for my first time) to travel to my new home for the next 5-ish months: Oslo, Norway! While I will miss my truly wonderful family, friends, and University of Minnesota greatly during my time abroad, I am super excited to immerse myself in the cultural, educational, and natural systems of Norway. I am also very excited to travel throughout Europe to gain cultural perspective and to see what the diverse European continent has to offer. I aim to return from Norway as an informed global citizen, and I want to be able to use this knowledge/perspective to increase my impact on protecting and improving the environment as a young environmental professional.

My bags are packed and I am ready to go! The excitement is currently beating out my nerves, so that seems like an ideal place to stop for the night–er, morning. Thanks for making it this far, haha. I’ll be posting at least once per week, so be sure to check back soon or to subscribe for future updates.

-TJS