04 Mar Sweden vs USA

Hi! I am a 22 year old woman that was born and raised in Sweden and I am here at San Francisco for one semester, studying marketing. Today I was thinking about what to write about in the blog, what homework I should do first at the same time as I wrote down all of my midterms I’m going to have before spring break. Then it occurred to me, I could write about the difference from school here and at home, because the type of studying we do in Sweden is very different from the one here and it has taken me some time to adjust to this new studying style.

As I said before, here I always have five things in my head that I am supposed to do, which was exactly how I figured out to write about this, because in Sweden it is not at all like that. The biggest difference I would say is that in Sweden we only have one course at a time, while here I read five at a time. So, when I’m in Sweden I only have one subject to focus on, and we rarely have homework, instead we have a big exam in the end of the course which you have to pass to pass the course. It could also be that we have a group work that is throughout the course which is going to be handed in, in the end of the course. After we are done with that the new course starts, so we read several courses throughout one semester but only one at a time. So, you can imagine how different it was to start here, going from just having one thing to focus on and basically one date where the exam is, to having multiple homework every weak in five subjects. This was definitely overwhelming in the beginning, it still is actually.

Another difference I would say is that a lot of the tests here feels easier, at home we almost never have multiple-choice tests, we have essay questions were you have to write a lot (the last exam I had in Sweden I wrote 25 hand-written pages during just one exam time), and we also have 5 hours to write the exam on because they are very big.

I wouldn’t say that one way is the better than the other, the style here in San Francisco is definitely busier but the requirements for the tests are also easier whereas in Sweden I’m not as busy but it is definitely harder to pass the exams there. I think it is very developing to try out other ways of studying.