LIFE\’s Study blog – Andrea

November 10th was a Danish holiday called Morten’s Aften.  I was invited to celebrate with my friend and her family.  As near as I can figure the holiday is all about eating, especially a duck.  Basically, it was equivalent to an American Thanksgiving but for a different reason.  After asking a few people, the story the best I understood it, was that the head of the Church in Denmark (a long time ago) wanted this guy Morten to become a bishop.  However, he did not want to so he fled to the countryside and hid among the geese.  Well, Morten was discovered and sent back to the city to become a bishop. So this is the night that the Danes eat duck (translated Morten’s night) which is a bit confusing because the man was found among the geese.  However, I am told that geese do not fit in the small ovens in Denmark.  I guess the duck industry took a page out of Hallmark’s play book.  At any rate, the meal was so fantastic! I was told it was a warm-up for Christmas which I am looking forward to spending with my friends in Denmark.  

Since I only write about school, you are probably thinking this girl has no life. Well, not exactly. Copenhagen, while being a small city for a country’s capital, can be filled with excitement…particularly in the summer from what I hear.  One of the more interesting evenings in Copenhagen that I have experienced came in early October.  Culture night allows everyone to visit the sites of Copenhagen for one low price. A list of almost 100 events is available and you simply select a few and hope the rest of the 1.5 million people in the city did not select the same ones.  On this evening, my friends and I saw a museum with a lot of peoples’ busts because of the man standing on the roof beckoning us in with really cool music, explored the undergrounds of a castle which had way too long of a line, viewed the outside of a candy factory because we were too impatient to wait in a line that was not moving, heard the best live music from Sweden and Eastern Europe and saw the city from one of the highest points, the round tower. The city was more alive on this night than I have yet experienced it.

I knew luck was on my side when I was randomly assigned to be the 3^rd person to take the oral exam.  I know myself and the longer I have to wait and the more I have to hear about other people’s experiences the worse it is for me.   When I arrived, I was greeted by my two professors who appeared to be in a very good mood and an external examinator with a very friendly smile. I am not saying that I am psychic but for some reason that morning, only 10 minutes prior to my exam, I knew what my question was going to be. I walked by the guest lecturers office that spoke on that topic and knew I would be talking about heathlands.  The only problem with this topic is that I did not extensively study it as I did others because I thought it was a bit silly.  Heathlands are not so important in America but in Europe people want to maintain these wide open spaces which look similar to grasslands and have very low nutrient levels on this landscape. Extreme measures are taken to keep the nutrient level so low. I learned though this class that I am more of a “let nature go and see what it does” type of girl versus cutting all the sod out to remove the nutrients so we can have grasslands with this pretty pink plant!  Anyway, I digress.

I walked into the room, picked my question about heathlands and had 30 minutes to prepare.  I hurriedly tore apart my whole binder that I had spent the last two weeks meticulously organizing so I could quickly find material relating to any and all topics.  In a period of 20 seconds, it was destroyed. After my prep time was up, the room looked like a hurricane had hit it but I strode semi-confidently into the exam room with my 3 sheets of A4 paper with some talking points.  I chose to start by presenting the group report because I was able to prepare since I would be randomly selecting one out of the three.  I spoke so much and so quickly that one of the professors cut me off after 15 minutes telling me that I know that report and that we needed to move on to the question.  Now for the heathlands!

I read the question out loud with a shaking voice and started in on a response.  Within minutes, one professor was asking me questions after the other. However, the external examinator sat with a smile on his face, shaking his head as if he agreed with me.  The voice stopped shaking but the questions did not stop coming.  The most humorous one was, on the 4^th day of our trip to the UK we saw a heathland, why do you think it was so well developed (or something to that affect)?  Well, about 1/3 to ½ of the class was taught through fieldtrips and we had seen A LOT of heathlands.  Again, luck was on my side, during prep time, I identified this place as one example that I should talk about.  The exam ended and I have never been so happy to escape this experience. 

The next challenge was receiving your grade within 5 minutes of finishing the exam.   In the US, when you take a written exam  you have at least two weeks to dwell on the fact that you should have addressed this issue or that your friend said this and you took another angle.  Well, the bomb came in less than five minutes. I actually considered asking them if they would email it to me in two weeks so I could enjoy my week long break.  However, I succumbed to the system and was quite glad I did.  My hard work had paid off.

National Park in the UK we visited during an excursion

My thematic forestry class consists of 23 students with about 8 danish students and the rest international students. Most of usinternational students are on the Erasmus Mundus EU scholarship for non-EU students studying in the SUFONAMA (sustainable forestry and nature management) program. By some crazy chance, I am the only native English speaker in the class. This really comes in handy when we have to hand in group reports.

This course requires 4 group reports from our excursions to the forests near Copenhagen, Western Denmark and the UK.  My group consists of one Danish woman, a Chinese woman, an Ethiopian man, a Serbian man and myself.  You can only begin to imagine how challenging it was to finish the first report. So many people from so many backgrounds with such varied experiences! However, we are just finishing up our 4th report which is going to much more smoothly now that we have learned how to work with each other.

Western Denmark sunset during excursion to Jutland

I was so shocked when I saw my schedule for the first block. I only had one class! The one class is still considered a full time schedule with 15 credits for a 9 week block. The lectures are scheduled for two full days from 8-12 and 1-5 and two half days.  The first challenge is getting used to long lecture times. I thought it was some sort of torture to make someone sit in a lecture for 4 straight hours until I experienced my first one. After about an hour, a Danish student raised his hand, called the professor by his first name and told him that we needed a break. I was in shock along with the other international students sitting in the classroom.  However, the professor replied that of course we could have a break and asked us to be ready for lecture again in 15 minutes. What a difference from the US classroom! The laid back classroom style is really a nice addition to the learning experience.

Friends from orientation

I realize I am writing about something that happened almost 3 months ago.  However, I think its important to capture. I arrived in Copenhagen on July 30th, two days before the international student orientation.  When I received notification of the course, I thought it was a great opportunity to come to Denmark a month before my classes start.  Now I realize it was a brilliant idea!  In addition to leaning about the Danish culture, a bit of the language, A LOT about group work and all the logistics of the University and the city, I met 40 other international students in the same situation as me!  This has been so important for my time here thus far.  From those 40 students, we represented 26 different countries.  What a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the world and other cultures! When classes finally started, I already had friends, was able to navigate the city a bit and was settled into my housing situation.  A big thanks to those who coordinated the orientation.