Week 1: Why Uppsala?

I, Chris Stanley, being of sound mind (sort of), and age 19 and two thirds, have decided to keep a blog. It is something that occurred to me a week or so ago, and it seems to me to be the best way of informing as many people as possible about my time in Uppsala/Sweden (from mid-August to mid-January). I have started it now because it is precisely 50 days until I go to Uppsala, which gives me a suitable time frame to describe the build-up to my departure. Today is also the birthday of my brother Alastair (who’s 22 by the way), which makes the start of this blog all the more significant, and gives me a handy starting point.

Like most of my friends, Al, upon hearing that I was venturing to Uppsala wanted to know, “Why Uppsala/Sweden?” The truthful answer is – I’m not entirely sure. After all, this is me you’re talking about; I’m notorious for not thinking things through! I think part of the reason is that I wanted to go abroad after Sixth Form at some point, but I didn’t want to do a gap year. Why not? Well, to me, gap years appear to involve a great deal of thought, individual organisation, fund raising and planning, and being the lazy swine that I am, I decided that if I was going to go abroad, I was going to let someone else do most of the organising. I also felt that if I applied to do a gap year, I would soon run out of things to do, as has happened to several of my colleagues, who after spending a few months hurtling around the globe have now fallen back into the usual state of working part-time in order to raise funds. Thus the cons of a gap year seemed to outweigh the pros, and I went straight from Sixth Form to Cornwall Campus. Despite this non-international move, I was still open to the idea of studying abroad: whilst I have been on three foreign exchanges (to Göttingen and Munich in Germany and Ancenis in France), and enjoyed each of them immensely, I haven’t really studied abroad properly (although I did learn the Latin word for elephant whilst in Germany, “Elephantus”).

I was admittedly unaware of the Erasmus programme (which is enabling me to go to Uppsala), but once I had heard of it I was immediately interested in what it had to offer, and thought it a good opportunity. The choice of countries was limited: sadly, Germany and France were unavailable, as were Spain and Italy, as these countries’ universities only accept students who are studying the respective language at Uni. I was not too concerned about this, as I ideally wanted to go somewhere different, but this did only leave a few countries to choose from: Holland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Turkey. I had originally wanted to go to Denmark/Copenhagen, but apparently that’s for Sociologists only, so with Denmark out of the picture, I went for Uppsala/Sweden. Why? Well, it seemed to me to have the best University (Uppsala Uni is the Scandinavian equivalent of Oxbridge, and is by far the best Uni around) and the best atmosphere of the bunch: also, the Swedes seem to be very eager to practise their English whenever possible, and many of them also speak either German or French, both of which I studied at A-Level. Furthermore, the history of Sweden is particularly interesting to me, and I shall be going into more detail about just how interesting it is in future bulletins.

So then, five key reasons why I’m going to Uppsala:

I wanted to go abroad, but without taking a gap year.
I wanted to go somewhere different.
I wanted to go to a well-established foreign University.
I wanted to go somewhere where speaking French and German would come in handy.
I wanted to study Swedish history, and what better place to do that than in a Swedish City?

So there you are: for anyone who couldn’t understand why I was going before, hopefully that makes it a heck of a lot clearer. If you have any further questions about why I’m going to Uppsala, drop me a message and I’ll get back to you when I’m free, or feel free to leave a comment. Next week I’ll be explaining why exactly it is that I’ve decided to “abandon” Cornwall for the disturbingly long period of seven months. Until then though, I’ll see you all next week for another enthralling instalment of…

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sweden (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Chris Stanley