Swedish education

This post will be in english, unknown why.

I have started my medical studies again, now in Sweden, at the University of Umeå. It's comfortable to be able to speak my mother tongue for everyday use, and it's fantastic to be a student again. I might even be allowed to skip a semester due to my studies in Czech Republic.

This first semester I have three courses; Professional developement (which is a subject I will have every semester until graduation), Cell biology and of course the Introduction course. The Introduction lasted for 2 weeks, and was about ethics, anatomical overview and.. some kind of "latin". The introduction was ended with a group test in anatomy ("whats the latin name of the thigh bone?", "how many vertebrae are in then human spine?").

The professors and handlers have stated during our first lectures that they will start slowly due to our very densly packed party schedule theese first 3 weeks.. As you migth understand by now, things are a bit different here than in Czech Republic. Today we had our "Innsparkssittning", meaning our "first term dinner party". We are now officially "ettor" (first semester students) and not "nollor" (zero's, freshmen) any more. Since a new class of medical students are accepted every semester here, we are not called "first year students" or "2nd-graders" and so on, but are labelled after how many semester we have studied. A bit confusing from time to time. An another difference is that the study only takes 5,5 years here, not 6. I hope I don't miss out anything!

My class consist of very nice people, a lot of them very young, but some of them more like myself in age. It's balanced in that way, and that makes it easier to be one of the old ones. And of course, there are a lot of classmates who really want to be in my case group, because of my knowlegde in histology and anatomy..

I hope you all back in good old Hradec have a nice time, lecture week will start quite soon, I guess? I miss you!