The Mullingar Diaries

Recently I went to an info meeting with EDU about studying in another country. I have had a troubled mind about whether to study abroad or to just study online. The education in itself is the same; however the amount of money is the big difference. Studying abroad is expensive as hell and it will result in taking a loan while studying online will be loan-free. I went to the info meeting to get a clearer picture of what I want to do when I am going to Australia. I had been playing with the thought of studying at an Australian University a bit and the thought of it seemed fun. The fact that you would be able to make friendships easier because you’d be thrown together with people from day one was quite attractive to me. I tried moving to Ireland on my own and I tried to develop friendships there. It was very superficial and it wasn’t until I had to return to Denmark that I felt I was finally moving forward. I am great at being by myself but you see so much more with people around you. However I didn’t really feel foreign in Ireland because even though the friendships where superficial I felt welcome.

The info meeting cleared my mind quite a lot about whether to go for the university life or the online life. At the meeting I learnt the difference between me and other people. When asked why people wanted to study abroad most people said something like:

“I want to experience a new way of being educated”

“I want to study at another university”

“I have heard great things about universities”

“My first priority is a great university”

University, university, university… I could care less about universities and that is the difference and that is what made me realise that spending hell loads of money on a university that I don’t even care about will be downright stupid. It shocked me how few mentioned the fact that they wanted to experience another culture as their first priority. Instead it seemed like something that would just be a bonus side-effect to studying at a foreign university. The person responsible for the meeting also said something about a Buddy-Programme universities offers to foreigners. It’s a program where the foreigner will be assigned to a local who will show the person around. But it shocked me when she mentioned that it was a great idea because you got to see where the locals go. It had me thinking that if you are not assigned that programme if studying abroad then you will not get to see the local places and meet the locals. And that is one of the problems I always have with foreigners. They tend to stick to other foreigners and for me it just seems like a lot of waste to go to another country if you just hang out with foreigners. I would hate to go to Australia and just befriend other Scandinavians. If I want to talk to Danish people I can just stay in Denmark. The foreigners in Denmark are just the same. They live together and do everything together. They don’t even try to integrate. They go to museums and do other tourist-like stuff where I am different. I want to come back from a trip and tell people about a stupid tree I saw in a stupid forest where no one was around.

Studying at universities I realised that you will be put together with other foreigners and based on that and other things I made up my mind; and that is to stay away from universities and hopefully stay away from foreigners. I am going to study online and start from scratch just the way I did when I moved to Mullingar. It’s always easy to take the easy way out, but I just don’t think it will give me the satisfaction I want from another country and culture. So I am going to take the tough and lonely path again and hopefully get something beautiful out of it. It’s so much more challenging and satisfying when you make it work all by yourself.