Busy doing nothing

17 hours of sunlight a day and no homework to do make Lund a surreal springtime wonderland of endless fun, free of that pesky American Dream, Mo Kudeki writes.

I spend hours on Facebook and Spotify, but oddly not because I’m procrastinating on something.  I walk around town listening to Chromeo on my iPod and peoplewatch downtown.

I sit in the Botanical Gardens with my friends, literally ALL DAY, and then we go grill somewhere and hang out for several more hours.

When one fika ends, the next begins.  It’s been a month since I did anything resembling schoolwork.  I have two classes per week.

Not that I was particularly busy in the winter either, but it was constantly dark then – so having nothing to do “all day” felt like having four hours of freedom.  This spring weather makes me want to be outside constantly, and the ridiculous amount of sunlight makes the days feel endless.  At 11 PM last night, the sky was still decidedly blue, not black.

I know I’m leaving Sweden in less than two weeks, but it’s hard to grasp that amount of time right now, since every day feels like it lasts FOREVER, in the best possible way.

It feels as if time has stopped.  And I get to spend eternity enjoying my time with my friends.  Where’s the catch?  Sometimes I have to pinch myself.

Doing nothing is a weird and foreign feeling. Back at my home university, I tend to overcommit to responsibilities, so for the past four years my life has been a juggling act between homework, extracurriculars, friends, and sleep.

Last semester I got to the point of caffeine addiction and exhaustion that I chugged a cup of coffee at midnight (last round at the cafes) and still fell asleep, sitting at my desk, half an hour later.  Doing nothing in Lund has been a welcome and much-needed break.

Although exchange students are especially infamous for having very little to do (hence the ability to constantly travel Europe), I feel that life at Lund is much more laid back than American universities, even for regular students.  Many had THREE weeks off for Easter!  And my Swedish friends, while they’re certainly more busy than me, can almost always go out whenever I am.  Occasionally someone has to stay in to study, and that’s like, a big deal.

People in Sweden are also generally less rushed about university than in the US.  Many take off a year or two before beginning to study, to work, travel, or do whatever they feel like.

In the US, taking a year off is seen as a bizarre thing, and sort of a failure.

The common wisdom is “if you take a year off, you will never go back to school.”  At 22 years old, I was one of the oldest undergrads I knew in the US, whereas 22 is quite average in Lund.

The culture of the US is very competitive, and it feels like everyone is in a huge rush to hop from high school to college to grad school to the perfect career and finding a spouse, and you’d better be done by the time you hit 30.  Not a lot of time for soul-searching.

In Sweden, life feels more like a linear progression – first you do something, then you study, then you do something else.  Way less panic going on here.

I hope I’ve picked up enough Swedish laid-backness to at least schedule myself some time to sleep next semester.  I don’t feel quite ready yet to go back to the pressures of the American Dream, but that doesn’t matter

– I still have like 13 incredibly long, sunny days left in Scandinavia – eternity.