The majority of students at colleges and universities in the United States choose to study abroad in Europe, and there’s one reason for that: the ease and ability to travel to other European countries on a budget. It’s ridiculously tempting to fill every weekend with a new cobblestone-paved city, attempting to distinguish between the places that begin to blur together. However, every person I’ve spoken to is equally as excited to spend substantial time in Stockholm and explore this city, our home for the next few months, which is understandable since we did choose to study abroad here, after all. So now the question becomes, “How are we supposed to fit all of our travel aspirations, our expectations for familiarizing ourselves with Stockholm, and our academics into a mere four months?”

Honestly, I don’t have an answer for this yet. Between the hundreds of pages of reading I’m required to do on a weekly basis (granted, they’re all interesting, but definitely an amount comparable to a normal workload at Swarthmore), going to different areas of Stockholm every weekend, and trying to plan out my trips for the rest of the semester now that we’ve gotten our syllabi, I found myself hunched over my laptop frantically searching up cheap flights and nagging all of my friends to send me their program’s break schedules. I would self-describe as a planner in all aspects of my life, so this is no different. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I’m terrified of running out of time here, so of course this would naturally lead to a panic-induced booked trip at the end of September. I definitely don’t recommend this method of planning your travels, but I’m slightly relieved I have something set in stone.

Now that I’ve taken a few hours to calm down and internally rationalize that I have time to book flights and carefully choose where I want to spend the few free days I have this semester, I realized I spent so much time stressing myself out that I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the weekend. It’s Sunday evening and I’m looking ahead at another week of back-to-back classes and making plans with friends and for now, that’s what’s keeping me sane. As much as my travels are up in the air, the stability of my schedule here in Stockholm is exactly what I needed. I’m still trying to figure things out for myself and part of that is learning how to keep a level head while making long term plans and commitments. I think the best case scenario is that I come out of this semester panic-free and actually able to purchase flight tickets without breaking out into a cold sweat.