Thursday, August 11, 2016

Ekonomikum and Catwalks

For those of you who don’t know, ‘Ekonomikum’ is the department for business and economics study at Uppsala University. I was admitted there to study my master in Business and Management. I still remember my first day of orientation there. I went there wearing super casual stuff (don’t really remember what exactly but casual stuff for sure) and boy was I surprised to see how fashionable students were there.  Everyone had their own unique style, looked rich; not to mention literally everyone owned an apple laptop. And I was there with an Acer which I am still using today and casual clothes on. Felt pretty left out not going to lie. 

However, another matter was that I was completely new to this University whereas a lot of students were already studying their bachelor there and then got admission the same master studies as me. Hence almost all of them sort of knew each other or had their own group of friends. Not to mention, almost 70% were Swedish students in the whole class which reduced to 80% when we started taking classes for our own tracks. I remember that it was only me and one Chinese guy who were among the international ones, and everybody else was Swedish. I didn’t really enjoy that specially because I was studying and living in a multinational environment in Borlänge where I had my undergraduate studies. Having said that, I did try my best to become friends with my Swedish classmates in Uppsala but it was just hard. I think it’s safe to say that Swedish people aren’t really social if they aren’t drunk. I did think my classmates were pretty nice and cool when I worked with them in groups but it was too hard to break that certain boundary and become good friends with them. Hence most of us remained classmates. On the other hand, I was good friends with three dudes; one from Ghana, one from Nigeria, and One from Ethiopia. I knew the guy from Nigeria from my bachelor studies; we were in the same class. Not really in touch with them though which is kind of sad but I still remember them and the good times we had and miss them. I’m sure all of them are pretty busy in their own lives now but I do hope they remember and miss me too. 

However, getting back to the fashion part; I decided to buy a bunch of nice new fashionable clothes to wear to my classes. I started to think that I’m not going to wear the same outfit over and over again. I’ll buy clothes every two weeks if I have to. Well guess what, a tiny detail, I didn’t have a job back then so wasn’t really thinking everything through when I was planning all of that. As a result of course my plan didn’t work out and at one point I didn’t really care. I do think that we should wear presentable clothes but those clothes don’t necessarily have to be new every day or every other week. The most important thing is to have a good attitude on, to be social, respectful, and nice; if I can’t carry all of that then carrying new and expensive clothes wouldn’t do much of a big difference, now would it? Also speaking of having an apple laptop, well I did want to have that at one point but I decided not to have it just because everybody else has it. Basically we shouldn’t do something just because everybody else was doing that instead we should do whatever that’s comfortable for us and makes us happy.


Source: http://www.ergo.nu/files/imagecache/article-image/images/catwalk1.jpg



Last but not least, studying at Uppsala was really a dream come true because my father really wanted me to study there. It is one of the best Universities in Sweden and among the top 100th worldwide. Undoubtedly it was a privilege to study there and having that awesome student life experience.  This is one of the many interesting stories I have from my life in Uppsala. 

Last but not least, studying at Uppsala was really a dream come true because my father really wanted me to study there. It is one of the best Universities in Sweden and among the top 100th worldwide. Undoubtedly it was a privilege to do my master there and having that awesome student life experience in that beautiful city. I could do anything to go back to that life again. This is one of the many interesting stories I have from my life in Uppsala.