Hello everyone, My name is Likith Madhu I am doing my master’s in Industrial engineering and management. I have been a student ambassador for the past one year (2019). I arrived in August 2019 at Linkoping, it was a whole new world for me as I was from India. I have never been to any European country before. Let me be frank, industrial engineering was not my 1st option when I applied to do my master’s. But I was given an option for IEM when they published my results. I was not disappointed and took it as an opportunity as I have worked as a graphic designer before and management was not a new subject for me and it also involved mechanical aspects of the industries which I had studied for my bachelors. When I did my research about the college and the branch, I was convinced that this was an amazing opportunity. Industrial engineering and management course from LiU is the oldest course offered in Sweden as it was first started at LiU and LiU had a good reputation. I was convinced that this was a very good opportunity and I never regret it.
I arrived at Linkoping on 21st august 2019 from Arlanda airport. it was a warm afternoon since it almost summer and I Kinda felt like winter in India. I was curious about the weather in Linkoping because of all the experience that I had heard from my seniors in Linkoping. it was a good start for me as it was not so cold and not so warm. well, after a week of my arrival the weather started shifting slowly and it got cold. But I knew that it was never bad weather, it’s just bad clothing. I started wearing appropriate clothes and it was just fine. It took me 2 to 3 weeks to get adjusted to the weather. I lived in Ryd in the student corridor rooms that were offered to me by the university and I started to make it my home for the next two years. it was a bit surprising for me to find many Indians in ryd and it helped me to make my transitions. I started making new friends and I was really happy about learning new things. I would say I had a gang of friends with whom I hang out a lot. we had a WhatsApp group where we planned to have parties and have fun almost every weekend.
cooking was never my cup of tea, But I dint have a choice here. so I started cooking with the help of my friends. I also made friends with my corridor people who were from Sweden and other European countries. they thought me western dishes and we used to cook together almost every week. since we had a lot of Swedish people in my corridor, we used to have fun FIKA’s every week. I enjoyed conversing with them because each conversation was about something different and it was all interesting. I don’t know how, but I felt that the time was moving fast in Sweden for me. I was always occupied and I was doing one or the other things every now and then. it was a lot of fun.
The light played an important role here for me. I am from a country where the sun sets at 6 and rises at 6. when I arrived here the sun used to set at 10 at the night and come back at 4 in the morning. but we had the opposite schedules of the sun in the winter and it was an interesting part of Sweden for me. But if you keep yourself occupied, it’s not a big deal and you might enjoy the change. my first winter experience started in mid-October when the temperature went down to single digits. i experienced my first ever snowfall in mid-November where it snowed for 1 day. I and my friends went out to play in the snow and had fun for almost an hour. and thereafter it was all cold and white for me. I never left my room without my gloves and jackets. cycling to college was kinda adventurous because of the snow but we eventually have gotten used to it. I went to Germany and Denmark for Christmas with my friends and spent my new year in Munich. I will write about it in a future blog because it was an adventurous trip. soon after the trip, I got back to my academia and my usual life in Ryd. I really dint know how I passed my days from a to march because I was always occupied with something. I was planning to go back to India in June but I could not go due to the covid situation. Instead, me and my friends decided to explore more of Linkoping and Sweden which is another story to tell.
This is my 1st blog and I have a lot to share. I will be writing blogs from now on about all the fun stories that I experience in Linkoping
