CLIMATE AND EARTH
SYSTEM SCIENCES
Photo: UHH/Denstorf
27 April 2023
Photo: Von Anton HolmquistSoasta - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4014975
How far in advance did you start to prepare your stay abroad? Where did you get support with respect to the organization as well as finances?
I applied rather spontaneously for my semester abroad, and the application process itself is easy. It is just necessary to upload the required documents in the online portal, including a CV and a letter of motivation. After that, I waited until I got accepted. The information needed was send out by E-Mail, and with any questions I contacted the responsible Erasmus coordinator, Sonja Kanemaki who forwarded me to the responsible person, if necessary.
What was your everyday life like? and how does it differ from your everyday life on the campus Hamburg?
First of all, the semester in Sweden is structured in a completely different way. It has two periods (each approximately one and a half months) and there’s only one 15 CP or two 7.5 CP courses happening in each period. Personally, I had one 15 CP course each period and I found it to be very nice to focus on one course only. The courses themselves covered a lot more material than a course here at UHH, but it was a bit easier to follow because you’re only following one course instead of, for example, five courses. Therefore, keeping deadlines in mind, doing the required reading, etc., was no problem.
The facilities at Lund university are very nice, and there are several places I went to to study. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a Mensa, but some of the so-called student nations organized lunches during the week, and there are a lot of cafés around campus to get food and coffee. And, since Lund is very small, it is also easy to grab some food in the city during your lunch break.
The student nations are also responsible for the student life in general. They organize pubs, clubs, hikes, movie nights, lunches, and much more. It is mandatory to join a nation during the first week, but it is no problem to join events from other nations than the one you chose. So, after a long day at university, I often went for a drink in a nation’s pub with some of my friends, or on weekends I went hiking in the beautiful nature surrounding Lund.
What fascinated you the most during the semester abroad?
It’s hard to pin down what was the most fascinating, but I think it was just life outside university. Of course, studying in Sweden was a great experience, but life outside university differed quite a lot from my life here in Hamburg. First, the student nations make student life in Lund much more active and it’s always nice to have a possibility to go out almost every day of the week. Secondly, the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) offered a lot of trips, for example to Finnish Lapland, Norway, Iceland or Gotland. I went on two trips, the one to Finnish Lapland and to Gotland, both were amazing experiences and I definitely recommend joining an ESN trip. It is also a great
possibility to get to know new people from Erasmus, even from different cities in Sweden. For example, I got to know some Erasmus students from Växjö because we shared a cabin on Gotland.
To what extent does the experience helps you to broaden your scientific knowledge? Were you able to get to know new aspects of climate science and if so, which?
I think it helped to broaden my scientific knowledge because the course system is very different to ours, we had a lot more seminars where we were able to engage and be productive. For example, we had a seminar where we had a “Mock-COP”, COP being the Conference of the Parties. We were divided into groups and each group was assigned the role of a country or a group of countries. Then, we prepared arguments for our roles and set some goals. During the negotiations we had to talk to each country’s representative and the outcomes of our negotiations were put into an online tool, which calculated the total global warming with the goals we agreed on. There were three rounds of negotiations in total, but we couldn’t reach 1.5 degrees according to the online tool. I think this seminar in particular was a nice introduction into how politics and negotiations work, and that it is much more complicated than it looks from the outside, because each party has their own interests.
What do you take with you from the semester abroad? (either personally or career wise)
From my semester abroad I take with me that I love working in an international environment, and I hope that I can later work in a job where my surroundings are international as well. I believe the different backgrounds. I think that the different backgrounds, experiences and viewpoint complement each other very well, and this is very valuable and helpful especially in the field of climate science.