Today I wanted to tell you about my experience with taking additional courses on top of your fixed course of your master’s prgramme. Right up front, I will have to say that extra courses are only free of cost if you have a citizenship within the European Union. Otherwise you would have to pay and from my point of view that’s not worth the prices. But as you know, we only have one course at a time here in Sweden and since that might leave you with some extra time. I decided that it would be nice to fill that with some optional courses at LiU!

I was especially interested in courses in the international master’s programm “Ethnic and Migration Studies” since they go very well with my original program in “International and European Relations”. Consequently, I applied for two course in their program through universityadmission.se. There you have the chance to apply for (online) courses all over Sweden! Since I prefer courses in person and was interested in exploring Campus Norrköping I stuck to my first interest. My first extra course was called “Intersectional Migration Studies” and was a perfect addition to my usual program, since it was a 50%-course, which means it goes on for a longer time and isn’t as demanding as 100%-courses. Still, I have to admit that it meant a huge amount of extra work and readings. I was only able to complete the course because the teacher extended the deadline of the final paper for me. The second course I took was “Migration Policy of the European Union” and due to the high workload in both this and my “original” course, I was not able to finish it completly. Still, I got to follow the lectures and seminars and learnt a lot through the readings and the inspiring lectures. It was therefore worth it after all, but you shouldn’t take on additional courses with the goal of finishing them whatsoever, since that will lead to a lot of stress. I recommend taking it as an additional source of input and inspiration.

Furthermore, I can truly recommend taking language courses along side your studies. Obviously, it is truly worth it to start learning Swedish when you live in Sweden. The university offers some great courses in different languages, that a few of my friends take and they are really happy with them. Of course there is also the possibility to learn Swedish through SFI (Swedish for Immigrants), courses offered by the state for free! This is good to combine with your studies, since they will take place in the evening and from what I’ve heard you can schedule them quite flexible. I am personally not learning Swedish, since I wanted to rather improve my french even more and did not want to focus on two languages at the same time. This is why I took a language course in french at LiU. This is a 25%-course and  takes place online. The course started in January and lasts for the whole semester. I have different tasks to do in the areas of oral, written and listening exercises which are designed to prepare me not only for the DELF exams but also for using the language in a professional context, since I had some previous knowledge. I really enjoy the chance to improve my language skills and it is good to combine with my regular studies as the course is not too demanding.

I hope you got an idea of the advantages and challenges in taking optional courses! I wish you best of luck with your studies 🙂

//Jule

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