Student blogs

One night you go to bed and the ground is still the asphalt gray, the trees are bare brown, and the roofs are clean. The next morning, the entire world is suddenly covered in white. The ground is snowy white, the trees have a powdery frosting and the roofs have an icy blanket. In the blink of an eye (sleep), the world I live in can change. That is what the past 4 months felt like. I was sleeping in my childhood home one night in Jamaica; the next morning I am doing a Master’s programme in KI in Sweden.

I wanted to share some pictures and thoughts from a winter’s snow that prompted me to think about my time here.

The unfamiliar

On most days, I go through the routine: wake up, eat, go to classes, study, meet friends, and go to bed. That routine does not change drastically from place to place and gave me the illusion of familiarity. However, the day that the snow covered the land, it reminded me of the unfamiliar once again. The last time I had seen snow was in 2019. The wind is colder than usual. My steps make a different sound against the pebbles mixed with snow. The air is also somehow brighter. “Oh right, I’m no longer in my tropical paradise but somewhere else.”

In order to embrace this unfamiliarity, I took a really long walk in the forest near KTH.

Myself in future

When I sat in front my computer in 2023 looking at KI programmes, did I imagine this future one year later?

Did I see myself standing on a large field of white? No, not at all. Perhaps I did not even know what to expect. Instead, the choice to apply and accept the offer took me here. In the span of a year, I’m suddenly living a very different present. What will my future look like one year from now? Maybe I can predict now that I will be writing another blog to reflect but even that prediction is not 100% guaranteed.

Final words

My cheesy ending to this short reflection is the conclusion: Let life take you places. If you’re currently applying for any of KI’s programmes, then maybe life might take you here to the same snowy forest I visited one year later.