I always wanted to go to Sweden as I enjoy the cold and love nature. Hence that I was really excited to come to Sweden for my semester abroad and make the most of my stay!
Now that I have been here for about 4 months, I have made some great memories already. But I also find myself having some trouble enjoying it to the fullest extent as I have set up high expectations for myself in the beginning. To help you establish realistic expectations for your own semester abroad, I want to share my experiences so far and give you some tips.
credits right photo: Gösta Reiland/imagebank.sweden.se
credits left photo: Anna Baumbach
The fear of not experiencing enough
For preparing myself for the semester abroad I consumed a lot of online content, recommending me the best spots to visit all over the country. As this is my first semester I spent abroad, I quickly adapted my expectations about the semester to the content I saw and got to think about my semester abroad as a long-lasting vacation. I was happy seeing all those beautiful videos and pictures and got really excited realizing what I was going to experience.
Now that some time has passed, I recognize that a big part of the semester abroad is of course also studying. I was quite sad and frightened realizing that a routine had come into my daily life, and I didn’t spend every day experiencing something new and astonishing like it was advertised to me on Instagram and other social platforms. I got stressed and worried, feeling like I haven’t done everything possible to experience the whole glory of Sweden as my semester abroad is now already creeping to an end.
High expectations (from others)
So, after seeing all the things, I could experience in Sweden, online, my expectations of what and how much I should experience during my semester here were unrealistically high. Adding to this, my friends and family had a lot of expectations as well that they put on me, telling me things like “This is going to be the best time of your life, enjoy it!” or “This will be such a transformational time period, I’m excited to see how much you’ll have changed”.
And with those expectations, I entered the semester abroad. And don’t get me wrong: Your semester abroad can totally be all that. But if you expect it to be that, then most likely you are going to be disappointed because you start viewing your experiences and all the friends you made as trophies, trying to get closer to that goal of the “best time of your life”.
credits left photo: Niclas Vestefjell/imagebank.sweden.se
credits right photo: Anna Baumbach
How I dealt with it
I recognized what a semester abroad really is. It is mainly the chance to study somewhere else. And as you have to study, naturally you get into a daily routine, living “normal life” in another surrounding, doing things that aren’t that fun all the time, just as you would in your home country studying as well. As nice as it would be, experiencing something amazing every day isn’t something one can actually achieve, so try to prevent yourself from having those false expectations in the first place.
What helped me calm down and start to really enjoy my experiences made in Sweden was to realize, that what others show online (traveling accounts but also your own friends probably living their “best lives” in other countries at the same time as you) are just a glorified and romanticized version of how it is actually going down for them.
credits left photo: Henrik trygg/imagebank.sweden.se
credits right photo: Anna Baumbach
To me it has turned out to be very hard finding the balance between using Instagram as a resource to inspire myself in finding new places to visit on the one hand and getting confronted with the idea that my semester abroad has to be as immensely magical and transforming as it is portrayed by others on the other hand. So, reducing the amount of time spent on Instagram and other social media platforms, or deleting them, might be a considerable option. Firstly, so you don’t see too much idealized footage of traveling accounts or friends and secondly, so you are not tempted to post about your experiences but really live them for yourself instead. I concluded for myself though, that it isn’t an option for me to delete Instagram as it is still mainly a useful tool for me.
Regarding the expectations my friends and family portrayed onto me, saying the semester will be the best time of my life and it would transform me, I find it important to just ignore them. It might also be useful to consult them, making them realize and deconstruct their expectations by explaining that it is just not likely that you will come back as another person after only about 5 months.
As the semester abroad will be very eventful and you can lose track of the experiences you already had, I find it very helpful to document it (for my own).
By taking pictures, writing a journal or even just writing in your calendar what you have done you can go back to the experiences in times when you forget and see how much has happened already. Here you can see an example of what my calender looks like.
Ultimately the semester abroad should be about having fun, exploring the surroundings as much as you like and getting to know more cultures, people and knowledge in every regard in general no matter the extent of it. Realizing that allowed me to adapt my expectations of my semester abroad which made it much easier for me to enjoy it. And no matter how you design and shape your semester abroad, I hope you will too!
credits cover image: https://unsplash.com (Brandon Jean)
Dalarna university student blog 
[…] went through this phase too. I wrote about setting false expectations in this article. I felt that my expectations were too high and compared my experiences with those of others. It […]
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