Written by Andrés
04 Nov 2016
I’m writing this at 10 km of altitude, while listening to Arctic Monkeys in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean inside of a Boeing 747-8, and it is until now that I realize how far is Mexico from Sweden (this is kinda obvious, it’s geography, not rocket science right? but still…).
A lot of people have asked why I chose Sweden? Why I chose a place to study so far from my home country?
So, let me explain to you guys why I chose Sweden.
Challenge accepted
Studying in Sweden represents a challenge, first of all, because they speak another language, although everyone (literally everyone) in here speaks English I wanted to go to a place where I could experience something different, a different continent, a different culture, a different way of seeing things, a different everything.
Probably you have heard that great things are accomplished outside our comfort zone, and now I understand why.
Let’s put it like this, imagine your life is an experiment if you do the exact same thing over and over again the results won’t change if you control every single variable your outputs will be the same, this doesn’t mean that you should immediately start doing random stuff. But, I believe that everyone has some crazy idea; maybe trying a new sport, or learning something new. Einstein once said “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
I agree.
Now picture this: new country, new city, new classmates, new educational system, new food… I could go for hours but you get the point. A lot of new inputs will result in a buttload (a buttload is actually a unit of the imperial system) of new experiences.
Fresh start, new possibilities
You will put into practice new skills that you didn’t even know you had, you will dedicate 3 hours to do laundry just because you don’t have an idea of what are you doing, you will have the opportunity to join a student society or committee, and so on.
The possibility of new experiences increase linearly in function of how much we change the input variables this means that life is a function of new experiences and new adventures (at least that’s how I see it). Just like Elke said in her post (you can check it out here), going to Sweden is a new shot for just about anything.
I also agree.
A lot of people asked me before, “aren’t you afraid of going to a place so far from your home, to a place where you don’t know anyone, to a place where you don’t even speak the language, to a place where during winter you only see the sun a couple of hours, where in some parts of the country the temperature is so cold that your eyelashes freeze?” and the answer is simple: of course I was afraid, but that was the idea, and I can tell you that after just 3 months of living in Sweden this was the best idea I’ve had so far. And just by the simple fact that in the last 3 months I’ve lived a lot of new experiences, and this is just the beginning…
To be continued…
