Since I followed only a single course and not a whole programme or semester, I was not around for the introduction day and had to arrange my arrival myself. My landlord picked me up from the train station (in the middle of the night, not my smartest move there). The next day was a saturday and I took that day and sunday to explore a bit and find out how to get to the campus from where I would be living for the next two months. This was at the end of September, the city was absolytely stunning.
I applied for KI housing, but did not get in. Thankfully, I managed to arrange something else in time, and ended up sharing a small apartment in Sollentuna. The arrangements were made through Akademisk Kvart. The rent was rather steep, but on the other hand, the apartment was in a nice neighborhood, fairly close to the city centre and easily reachable by train of bus.
I was mainly involved in social activities with the students from my course. We went on the ghost walk, to the pub, fika of course... I also joined the Halloween party in Solvik, which is a lovely accommodation. I didn't participate in any of the social programmes for exchange students, but some of the things organised by global friends looked like a lot of fun :)
A beautiful town near Goettingen
At my master's course we are encouraged to go abroad for part of our programme. I chose to do this with the elective courses rather than the second internship, which is more common. The courses offered at KI sparked my interest and I decided to go to Sweden. The website of the toxicology course was, at the time, a bit lacking in information. The start and end dates of the course I'd chosen, as well as contact information, were not available. Thankfully, my master's coordinator knew whom to contact. The Swedish mentality on answering emails is much appreciated, they are very, very prompt about it. This is rather unlike what I'm used to from home.
Organising the whole thing was another matter though, with signatures and permission to be gathered and the summer holidays interfering. It took quite a while to get it all arranged and the application deadline was long past. Still, I was allowed to join the course and got everything worked out just in time.
4TX000 : TOX-Target organ toxicology
I followed the Target Organ Toxicology course at the start of this study year. It involved a lot of project based learning, which was new to me. I quite enjoyed this method of learning and the discussions it invoked with my fellow students. The course itself was very interesting, and covered many different aspects of toxicology. With the different backgrounds of all the students, we looked at many different parts of the problems we were given. I feel that I've learned a lot from this method, as my fellow students sometimes had very different points of view that really added to the solutions we came up with.
The lectures were often provided by guest lecturers who are experts in their fields. This was something I really enjoyed, as all were very knowledgeable and almost all lectured quite well.
I absolutely loved my time in Sweden. The course was great, the people were wonderful and Stockholm is a great city to spend a few months in, even in winter ;)
I was offered the chance to take 10 Swedish lessons for beginners. The course was quite fun, I'm no good in Swedish yet of course, but I know something now and I made some friends there as well. The lessons were good, and our teacher was very pleasant and enthusiastic (it's mainly my lack of language skills that accounts for why I can't speak any Swedish yet).
The study environment at KI is very pleasant. I really like the library and the group rooms there, they're excellent for projects. The professors were very nice and approachable, I always felt that I could ask whatever questions I had.
I only followed a theoretical course, without clinical or laboratory work.
At my home university (Utrecht) we have less group work and more lectures for the theoretical courses. I enjoyed the inclusion of more group work. The discussions can be very enlightening, especially with people from such varied backgrounds. The students were also allowed to give a lot of feedback on the course, not just afterwards but also during the course, I felt that this was a very good way to improve the course, especially because we had live discussions rather than just writing out complaints/suggestions.