By David Langran
dl@adm.au.dk
So, you’re fresh off the plane (more or less) in Denmark. The people around you are speaking an incomprehensible language, the weather changes every two seconds, and you’ve found out that the grading system means that potentially you could be walking away from your time here with an unbelievably depressing grade of -3 on your report card. Nevertheless, there are a few steps that can be taken to help ensure that you have a fantastic time:
• Stop converting prices from kroner into your own currency. Denmark is expensive (really, REALLY expensive): knowing just how expensive isn’t going to do your sanity any favours.
• Work out where to get some decent coffee. You’re going to need it – Thursday bars, Friday bars, the world’s largest Friday bar, summer parties, beginning of term parties, birthday parties, we-have-no-reason-to-party-but-we’ll-do-it-anyway parties. They happen a lot here, so it’s best to be fully prepared for the consequences.
• Get to know the Danes. It’s really not that difficult: they’re (generally speaking) great fun, and very useful to have around when you receive a letter from the bank and you need a translator. And anyway, it doesn’t do the university any favours to have neatly segregated international and Danish communities.
• Get to know everyone else, too. You’re in a unique situation – surrounded by people from all over the world with tremendously varied backgrounds – so don’t spend all your time here with people from your own country. You might as well have stayed at home and saved yourself the cost of the plane ticket.
• Don’t treat this period solely as an extended holiday: you are also here to study, Denmark has a strong academic tradition, and courses are difficult. If you want to do well, you’re going to have to work hard. Flunking all your exams would rather put a dampener on the whole experience, after all.
At the end of the day however, you are more or less guaranteed an amazing experience as long as you’re willing to make use of the opportunities available to you. You’re already here, so you might as well make the most of it.
