My first semester experience at LiU

Welcome back and Happy New Year to you all!

We are already halfway into January again and with that, I am finishing up my first semester of my Master’s program in Sustainable Development here at LiU. So, in this blogpost, I will talk about my university experiences in the last half a year.

Let us first go back to when I moved to Linköping, it was the middle of August and I arrived here by train. I moved into a lovely family-style house in Ryd and got to know my housemates. I had my roll call and my first course started at the end of August. These weeks were all about adjusting and making friends. I must say, I had a pretty hard time initially because it is a lot to move to another country where you don’t know anybody and also having to start a Master’s program. However, after a few weeks, I started to get the hang of it and found out what I liked and disliked about studying in Linköping.

The study pace of my Master’s program was quite different than what I was used to back in the Netherlands. My bachelor program was very high-paced, and structured, and there was a lot of pressure to get good grades. I was also used to having multiple courses at a time. Here in Linköping, I only have one course at a time, which goes on for 5 weeks. In the beginning, I needed to get used to this. I get bored pretty easily when it comes to studying so I like to have multiple things I can switch between. But on the other hand, it is really nice to only focus on one course, it makes it easier. The pace is quite high because we only have 5 weeks for one course, so that took some getting used to as well. Overall, I really liked the first 4 courses that I had this semester. We started off with some pretty broad courses about sustainability in research, environmental resource use, and governance. I did not have sit-down exams in all 4 courses, just paper deadlines and presentations. Personally, I liked this because I think it is less stressful. In the next semester, we’ll get some exams, so I am really curious how that will go. Adding to this, for me it was pretty easy to get good grades. I feel like the teachers here in Sweden are less critical than the teachers in the Netherlands. I’ve talked about this to some of my friends and they feel the same. So, for my program at least, it is pretty chill. I know it is very different for other programs though!

Besides studying, I’ve also really delved into the social life here at LiU. My first semester was all about saying yes to everything (within my own boundaries of course) and really experiencing the student life. So, my semester was packed with parties, fika, sittnings, trips, trying new sports, and making new friends. This was very enjoyable but exhausting at times as well. It took me a while before I found some structure in this. Now, after the Christmas break, I feel like I have found more structure and I am starting to settle in a bit more. However, I am also really excited about what the next semester will bring! I have some fun trips planned and my next courses sound very interesting!

If you want to know more about my first-semester experience, I was a podcast guest on an episode about the first-semester at LiU, which is coming out next week! You can find the podcast on Spotify called: Fika with us!

Have a lovely weekend!

/ Fleur, Master of Science for Sustainable Development

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