The Introduction Day was a lot of fun. Especially the Australian speaker made a good impression.
I appreciated the Information package we got, I used it very often in the next weeks (maps, contact dates...).

I didn't have contact to the student health centre because they are not allowed to give treatments.
I couldn't meet a global friend. They didn't have enough people.

I had a very good impression of my student room in the dorms, organized by the UAC.
It was clean, well furnished and easy to keep clean.

In general Stockholm is ridiculously expensive, so compared to that the costs of my student room where reasonable.

I did not attend social acitivities because the programmes where not very diversified. Mostly I missed sports activities. These are the easiest way to get to know other people, because you don't have to talk so much in the beginning. Plus you experience some kind of team feeling.
I checked the homepage of medicinska föreningen and the sports section is only in swedish, so not very appealing to exchange students, and the range is not very spread. Except for Soccer, Basketball and Innebandy (which is not really known outside of Scandinavia) there were only non-team sports.

I'm sure that it would have been more interesting in summer. I would have loved to join the Softball-team.

I made Swedish friends independently from KI.
The Swedish people in my course were very shy.

When I started my studies in Humanbiologie/Biomedicine I was determined to do an exchange semester. It is the perfect time point to go to foreign countries while you are studying:
You are only responsible for yourself and you have "something to do", so it is not only a holiday but you have time to get to know the people and culture of the country. But you use your time wisely and don't loose to much study time. If you do you can still have internships helping you to choose a major/ a thesis theme / a job.
The Funding by the state and the European Union helps to finance your stay.
Furthermore the biomedical field is very international and it is important to keep up with this: knowing the technical terms, being able to talk and discuss in English, not being shy in an international group.

My home university attended the Erasmus programme for Biomedicine students with three different universities in Spain, Italy and Sweden.
I have always been more interested in northern countries for climate and cultural reasons. Furthermore I heartd about the good reputation of Swedish universities and that exchange programs can be done without bigger problems.
This is why I decided to learn Swedish two years before I went to KI. In this time I learned about the fame of KI.

In retrospective I have to say that I was well informed by KI and my home university. In that moment I was just overwhelmed by the information given to me. I had to fulfill several due dates I got confused with because KI's and those from my home university overlapped so I thought they would be the same (for example handing in of the Learning Agreement). One problem was that the KI homepage-update for exchange students was a little late. I had problems to find courses because I didn't know when they would be provided.

All in all I could have found most of the information I needed, but I was a little overwhelmed and didn't get the KI homepage. Plus the Erasmus - office in Marburg had problems deciding if the courses are comparable or not.
But all these were minor problems.

I am glad I did this exchange. There were no bigger problems to be solved.
It was an experience and trained my patience and openness.
I learned a lot for my studies and this from another point of view.

Having learned Swedish for two years at home I attended an advanced language course. We talked freely about different topics in politics and society which helped a lot for normal conversations.

I definitely felt that this improved my language skills.

Having different lecturers for every lesson was definitely keeping it interesting. Most of them were committed and well prepared.
I liked the professional atmosphere the teachers let show. They prepared, printed the handouts and all of them pointed out that they could be contacted if anything was not clear.
This showed respect for the students. Some of the older professors at my university lack this kind of respect.

What confused me was that this really good "taking care of" sometimes led to strange mothering of students.
For example mandatory meeting with a supervisor before a presentation (this could be voluntary) or being obliged to ask questions in a journal club (otherwise one couldn't pass).

At my university we don't get the handouts provided. If the organization is good and the teacher wants it this way the presentation will be online the day before and anybody can print it for himself. But usually we would take notes.
If the handouts were a little late at lectures at KI the students seemed to be confused and sometimes we had to wait for the handouts to begin with the presentation, which would mess up the schedule.

In conclusion the study environment was very good and professional. Especially the library with its many computers and private study rooms stick to my mind. Plus it has a nice atmosphere where one wants to stay.

I have only one suggestion for KI: providing the presentations in some kind of online format. If you wanted to learn while traveling you had to take a huge amount of paper with you. The other students mentioned that this kind of database would exist. I am not sure what happened to it during this semester.