This year’s reflections

Hej allihopa! Here it is – the end of the year! Finally – I say! I have a tradition to write down a list of things I’ve done and I should’ve done in a year, and 2019 is no exception. Of course, I wouldn’t share every detail on that list here, but I suggest you create a list like that for yourself, before you get to writing your New Year’s resolutions. Somehow sitting down with a cup of hot chai, with my owl lamp and looking back at all the things I’ve done made me feel a lot less useless of a person. It’s a good exercise, especially when you get to “things you should’ve done” part. So, in the order of no importance, here are the things I’m proud of this year.

1. I’ve listened to the entire Harry Potter series in Swedish.

I know it doesn’t sound that impressive, but after that my Swedish took a giant leap for the better, which is no surprise, because the version read my Björn Kjellman is 141 hours and 25 minutes. How did this man manage to read all of that and how much time it took I don’t even want to imagine. It’s almost six days of Harry Potter non-stop. It took me good 6-7 months to listen to it in it’s entirety. Apart from improving my Swedish listening skills, it also taught me that I enjoy audio books – a concept that has been foreign to me for the longest time. Thanks to that, I integrated audio books into my commute and computation routines, which ultimately made me a lot less bored and more productive. Right now I am looking for new audio book service suggestions, because the app I used before is sadly too expensive for the amount of books I am able to go through in a month.

2. I wrote my Master’s thesis and graduated  with a Merits Degree

I  finished my last semester at university I had been enrolled in for long and painful 6 years (for both my bachelors and masters). What a relief! Writing my thesis  (and writing scientifically as a whole) is a chore I hate with a passion. My reasoning behind that is a) we are expected to stick to a very dry, boring and void of all creativity language and structure sadly prevalent in scientific publications; b) finding  and reading reference material and reformatting it into introduction to my own project is quite challenging to me, because somehow we were never taught that at uni, but expected to just sort of know how to do it, and also it is boring, because see reason a; c) reaching a specific page/word count instead of  organizing your project logically – if I don’t have anything more to say, you best believe I’ll spend an hour stretching every one of my 30 figures an itsy bit, so that in total I get an extra page I’m missing, because fuck you standardized thesis requirements, that’s why. In any case, defense went smooth, and soon enough there was graduation day. I admire how different it is from school graduation – no ball gowns, no obligatory waltz and a sense of having actually grown up and achieved something. I didn’t feel like I became an adult when I graduated school at 17, but when I received my Master’s diploma at 23, having worked at the lab for 5 years and done research internships abroad, having written tens of exams and having grown up with people I am now fortunate to call friends,  I felt worthy of my diploma, and like I, in those six long years at university, gradually became an adult.  An accomplishment indeed!

3. I got my first “real” job, my first ever “my” place and I moved to Switzerland… all in one go!

Tl;dr – the title sums it all up, so if the lazy hits you – feel free to jump to the next chapter

Yes, I know, this sounds crazy. Didn’t believe it myself for the first few months either. It had been a journey. At one point, I had to decide between what I want (move to Sweden, obviously) and what I need (in terms of career, education and opportunities). This wasn’t an obvious, nor was it an easy choice, and a week I took to mull this all over was one I don’t remember – I guess I was lost in endless thought, cycling between feeling like I betray my dreams or lose one of the biggest opportunities in my life. Those thinking days were done, and I made a decision to pursue a PhD in Genetics in Switzerland, in the francophone part. The match of the research area at the laboratory and my own interests was nearly perfect, which was one of the heaviest, and probably, most important, pluses.

Being the person that I am, I started learning French almost immediately, and it didn’t go smooth at all. Frankly, I hated it. If it wasn’t for a very talented teacher, I would’ve given up. I was back at square one, learning a language from zero.  My breakthrough in Swedish this same year, after give or take 3 years of learning, made me forget how hard it was at the very beginning. But where Swedish is, there is a passion for it, for what’s Scandinavian, for the culture I’ve experienced. With French, however, I never felt the same excitement. I have never been to France or any other French-speaking country, before I moved to Switzerland this October, so I had very little knowledge of what people are like and what their culture is like in vivo – because I don’t count national stereotypes and “speaking baguette” as a true understanding of culture. All the learning that I was forcing myself to do – which got a little better with time, because I naturally do like learning languages – was happening with the background of waiting and uncertainty. All the horror stories of acquaintances, who have found a position abroad but didn’t get a working visa in their country of choice – came up in mind, ruining all excitement and seizing the planning, which I started in early July. Of course, one needs a place to live. But finding accommodation in a tiny student-packed city by distance, in a language you barely began to understand, is not an easy task. The search was fruitless, and I had to rely on a hotel reservation for the first two weeks. The day of moving came around, I took my two 20-something kilo suitcases and took a plane to new life.

From the first train I took to soon-to-be my city,  Switzerland looked rural and beautiful. Mountain ranges, covered with rain clouds, as if they were under blankets, were covering the horizon, whenever you look. The air, humid from both lake Leman and october rain, was warm and gentle. I think it rained for the first three weeks of my arrival, almost every day, as if to test if I can take it. I sure did.
Apartment hunting, the uncertainty about the roof over my head, is what clouded my days. The day hotel reservation ran out, I would’ve needed to go somewhere, but the search was still not very promising. I’ve met people, I’ve seen places, I went to group visits, I visited the places alone, I saw new apartments with recent repairs, I saw places that were destroyed beyond repair. The pressure was building up, the stress about being very close to run out of last bits of savings ruined many experiences, and coupled with my determination to start working at the lab, where nearly every protocol was new to me, and wanting to make a good impression, feeling as lonely as I’ve ever been, I was on a constant verge of tears. As weary as I am in admitting this, I was miserable.
Until I found a place uphill in the city. It looked just like what I needed. Tiny, but cozy, close to everything important, it checked all points on my list. Having learnt from previous experiences, I knew I had to get it and I had to get it fast. I wouldn’t have gotten it without the support of our secretary, who devoted so much of her time to help me get the apartment. It is tiny, and I love it, because it is my own. It is missing some key pieces of furniture, like a bed(so far I am lucky enough to have a temporary bed from a friend of a friend, it’s an interesting story for another time), but nonetheless, I have found a place to call “home”, and it means a lot.

Of course, not everything is dark and sad. In fact, most of the things I’ve experienced in my first two months there, were great! I am happy to report that I am happy where I am – in my lab, on my floor and in my institute – and it’s a conclusion I was ready to draw by the end of first month (although it might have been influenced by the fact that all my first experiments worked and I was on a very high note). I have already met interesting people I hope to become friends with in the next years to come, and the general atmosphere is quite friendly. My project is still on the stage of being developed, and I am lacking a lot of skills for it, but early next year I will begin to learn and, hopefully, it will only get better from there.

I’ve learnt a lot about myself in those two months of experiences I haven’t had before. Although settling down and getting life into order is still a process, I wouldn’t be too shy to say that this extremely fortunate position, this decision, this move and this adjustment I have had the time to make, is one of the biggest achievements I have done not only this year, but in all my 24. It will take some time before I can top that. Good job, me!

4. Little, but important things

I think they are worth mentioning, but I wouldn’t write a whole paragraph about them:

• On February the 14th, I had my last drink and ultimately started my sobriety, at my first ever live concert of one of my favourite groups – Years&Years. What a V-day!
• I studied for, and I acquired, a driver’s license. I don’t have a car (yet), but it’s a new and quite useful skill nonetheless.
• I discovered my love for nail polish and wore amazing self-made and naturally grown sets of nails this year. I miss having 2 cm long talons, but I am persevering to make my manicures work in “scientific” conditions, when I wear gloves 24/7. Doing my nails is bi-weekly meditation session. It is also not the only bi thing about me.
• Started enjoying running again. Haven’t went in the last two months though (bad Dobbie!) but I’m planning to continue nonetheless.
• Realized that my internal happiness doesn’t depend on a place where I physically am. As obvious as it sounds, it took me good three years for this thought to cross my mind.

So, not a totally lost year, after all! Thank you for reading! Do try to have a list like that for yourself and what you’ve done, because I think you’ve had your big and little things too!

Hej då!