October 10, 2023
The benefits of applying to an International Master Program
Hello everyone! For those of you who do not know me, my name is Val and I’m a second year Design Master student, one of the several international programs here at Linköping University. For my first post I wanted to talk precisely about this: how being an international student allowed me to discover new ways of thinking and make new experiences.
Coming from Italy and having studied in a small city I never met international people in an academic environment, and the possibility of meeting people from all around the world was one of the many reasons I decided to apply to LiU. Luckily, it was exactly how I imagined! I met people from all over Europe, Asia, Northern and Southern America and Africa. And having a “melting pot” as a class helped me to adopt different perspectives in my personal and professional life. Of course during the first months we mainly shared the quirks specific to each of our countries, but as time went on I learnt to bring these stories with me, making sure that they would broaden my viewpoint as much as possible.
As Swedish students, one of the most important words you’re going to learn is “skål”, which means “cheers”, but there are many other ways to toast your drinks. In Italian, for example, we say “salute”, in Czech it’s “na zdraví”, in dutch is’s “proost” and so on. By this point, I’ve heard so many sayings and traditions while toasting drinks that I lost count. And every time I meet someone from a new country, this is one of the first things I ask!
But on a more serious note, being surrounded by people with different backgrounds has helped my design process. During our first semester, we were divided into groups for every course we had and this allowed me to learn different design approaches. First of all, the projects in themselves are tailored to bring out our specific areas of expertise, making sure that everyone has a say by contributing with their own knowledge to the project. Secondly, the partnership with people from different countries make the projects blossom even more, granting us to learn more than what the syllabus says. Specifically as designers, it’s fundamental to enlarge our creative process, so I am incredibly thankful to have had the opportunity to do so through this program.
Overall, I would say that being in such an international environment has helped me on multiple levels, and I am still learning something new every day. I am so glad that I chose Linköping University for my studies!
I’ll talk to you all soon!
-V
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