White papers & Library cards ??

We are beginning to form some sort of everyday life here, taking the night-bus to Cambridge for school weeks or fitting in fun activities to do in the weekends. We try to cook most of our meals ourselves and have for lazyness/cost reasons (the dollar averaging around 11.1 with fees) defaulted to a lot of oatmeal, yoghurt recipes, casseroles and such. Luckily I was brought up on left overs and can make nothing into a three course dinner so long as I have a stove.

The other day we had to run through Boston South Station not to miss the last bus to New York because of traffic jams and broken subways. In that specific moment we were reminded that we are in fact not at home and we need to be more cautious when it comes to bookings. Finally - we made it and were thankful for it during our whole trip back. Ofc. we learnt nothing from the experience as once again our lightheadedness was rewarded with accomplishment in the end.

The school system here is quite different, but in many ways this suits my style of learning a lot better than what we had in Uni in Sweden. There is so much analysis and reflection required, and a lot of white papers shared to act as companions along our trails of thought. The group discussions are great as well and I feel so overjoyed learning - there are some many real life decisions I now have the models or data to put behind. Or if nothing else I have new lenses to look through when it comes to decisions which went wrong. I feel happy that I am “older, but better” both work wise and academically.

I somehow (since I try to find meaning in everything) also feel thankful for my Michigan MSc being last minute cancelled back in 2013. If it hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have prioritized this at this stage of my life. Well, I would probably not have ended up in tech either. In any case, it was a huge disappointment when it happened, but it lead to something good. And these things happen all the time, blessings disguised as curses.

I had spent a lot of my BSc doing extra curriculums to get a good score to accompany my grades so that I was able to choose where I wanted to study - student ambassador, group head leader, etc etc it was all to pave way for my career in automotive. I looked at Nanyang, Delft but realized where better to study than automotive than the home of the big three?

Applications went well and I was pumped to be going to study automotives in the car capital of the world - Detroit. Unfortunately for 23 year old Andjela (an anagram of my current age - ha!) the city filed for bankruptcy that very July and though I had all the papers, school visas, health declarations I finally ended up not going.

This experience had me feeling very left out watching my fellow classmates experience new great things in Uni, and me having to return somewhat demotivated to Chalmers to finish up my degree at home. Being a competitive swimmer I got quite used to not winning due to hundreds of a second, but still it hurts when I don't win at least for a little while.

With that being said, I feel very grateful that I now have the opportunity to dive into school once again. I am so aware of my privilege this time around and I am a lot better at finding that Pareto 80/20 level of studying. Still with all my colorful pencils, but better at time boxing.

I don't think we change all that much, but I think we get better at being at odds with life and ourselves.

Wishing you a great day,

A