Student blogs

Studying would not be the same without my classmates – that’s why I want to introduce them to you today!

I made a survey for my class and 20 out of 28 people responded. In today’s blog entry, I’ll first show you the basics about us like where we’re from and what we did before toxicology. But towards the end, the questions will get more “personal”, so stay tuned if you’ve always wondered what for example our favourite toxicants are!

An international classroom

Like the other master programmes at KI, we’re a very international class and come from almost all around the globe:

This of course also reflects in the languages we speak. Since we study in English, it makes sense that that’s the language we all have in common. After that, the biggest language in our class is Swedish, and also Chinese/Mandarin are high up.

What did we do before?

Before I started the master’s, I was curious about the different background my classmates would have. Not only in the sense of their bachelor studies but also what stage in life they are in. Did they come straight from their bachelor’s or did they work, travel or do fully different things in the time between?

The thick blue line in the middle are the 10 students that came straight from their bachelor’s, the rest was busy with other things for a year or more. Out of the ones working, I know that some worked in science, some in other fields.

And no matter what we did right before starting the master’s, we of course all did a bachelor’s at some point. The majority of us studied biology or biomedicine in the bachelor’s, but there’s also quite a lot of other fields:

Ideas or plans for the future?

This can be a tricky one to answer since we kind of just started our master’s and the future feels so far away. But on the other hand (and especially given how fast these first few months have passed!), the coming two years are probably going to go by quickly, and the future is not as far away after all.

I found it interesting to see where my classmates see themselves in the future, and it will be exciting to see where we all actually end up.

Fun facts and favourites

Enough with the standard questions, let’s move on to the last part and get to know my class from a more personal view. I asked everyone for fun facts about them, here are some highlights:

• I did ballet for 12 years
• I draw comics but never published nor posted them
• cat person
• when I was younger I wanted to be a marine biologist
• I am a classically trained violinist
• I love Christmas
• I am a rapper
• I’ve been to Pitcairn island
• I cannot bend my pinkie without bending the ring finger too
• I get best sleep quality in the car

And since I’m a fan of (learning) languages, I took this opportunity to ask my classmates for their favourite words in their language:

Because we all live in Sweden (some since a few months, others since a few years or their whole lives), I was also curious to hear people’s favourite word in Swedish. Do you know what they all mean?

Last but not least: favourite toxicants. We’re only in our second course of the master’s, but it seems that clearly, some bonds and connections have already been formed. <3

Thanks for reading all the way until here!