My arrival was pretty well organized. I was picked up by someone of the pick-up service at T-centralen and brought to the student housing of KI, which was a good start and easier than going out on your own trying to retrieve your keys in the weekend. The introduction days consisted of a three-day Swedish course to learn the basics, which provided me with some initial contacts among the international students, and two days of introductory lectures and a campus tour. Overall the introduction week gave me a fairly good impression of the university grounds and main areas of the campus, although the tour could have been more extensive to my taste. 

I was housed in the student flat Strix, run by KI housing. I applied for housing via this website because it was recommended for the ten students coming to KI from Leiden annually, and the application was fairly easy. About 1 week before arrival I heard the details of the room that had been assigned to me. I was housed in a corridor with 11 other international students, all students at KI, with whom I shared the kitchen. From the beginning there was a nice atmosphere and together we set up a cleaning schedule to keep the kitchen clean. Whenever something in the kitchen or my room was broken (my drain got clogged one or two times) I filled out the maintenance form on the website of KI housing and they fixed or replaced the broken things fairly quickly. Overall this was good service. The one drawback on the housing was that in the period I was there, there was quite a lot of construction going on in the building to replace the electrical connections. This resulted in quite a lot of drilling noise during the day, which was annoying.

During my stay in Sweden I built up quite a large social life. I joined the choir of Medicinska Föreningen, the student union of KI, and got to know some Swedes there. In addition I visited several Global Friends activities (cruise to Helsinki, buddy activities) and met up with my Global Friends buddy over fika several times. I also joined an international church congregation in the center of Stockholm and visited the Bible study for young adults every week.

The information on activities for students was quite extensive in the introduction week, and events were greatly promoted via Facebook.

I wanted to go on an exchange because it interested me to see how other countries and universities set up their study program and what types of learning methods are used. Also I wanted to make friends with people from all over the world and learn more about culture differences and how to deal with them. My bachelor biomedicine in Leiden offered an exchange with KI, so I signed up and was selected together with 9 other students. Consequently the choice for KI was not conscious, but I did know KI was a renowned university and a good place to study. The information we got was quite extensive because this exchange is organized every year, however this year the program was changed for the first time and therefore some incorrect information was provided to us. Therefore we were required to make more inquiries ourselves. I was not required to be vaccinated or bring certain certificates, because I am a member of the EU and therefore these cooperations are easier to set up.

I had a lot of fun living in Sweden and studying at KI, meeting a lot of new people and learning new things about cultures from all over the world! It is a pity that the study program from Leiden did not entirely overlap with the Swedish courses, so I have to catch up on some courses now that I am back in the Netherlands, but overall I am satisfied about the whole exchange.

In the first week I was in Sweden, during the introduction week, I was offered a free three-day Swedish course at KI. This provided me with the basics of the Swedish language, which was enough to find my way around the public transport system and the supermarket (with some help of Google translate). The teacher of the Swedish course was enthusiastic and kind, and she gave us some interesting facts about Swedish culture. I continued improving my Swedish by practicing words in the app Duolingo, trying to speak Swedish in the choir I was a part of, and listening to the Swedish news on the Internet.

My studies at KI were quite different from the studies in Leiden. There were far more lectures and less self-study compared to Leiden, which resulted in a more passive learning style. I also did not need to buy books for my course, because most of the information was supplied in the lectures. The facilities at the university were great, with a good library with extensive opening hours and enough places to study. The practicals were pretty well organized. Supervisors and teachers were fairly approachable (which in Sweden is more common in itself, due to the less hierarchical structure of society). I did kind of miss the smaller group sessions in which one can discuss the studied matter and make it more a part of inherent knowledge rather than something you studied once and do not quite remember. Although some people prefer listening to lectures, I myself am more the type to read and self-study new material and then talk about it with others to really let it sink in. 

One thing I did learn while studying in the international Biomedicine program of KI is to cooperate with people from all cultures. The Dutch nature is quite straightforward, so I learned to be less direct in giving feedback and taking people’s cultural background into account when discussing topics.