TH E GUI D E BOOK
MAT T KRA M E R
WHAT WAS THE BIG G ES T T HI N G Y OU LE A RN E D WHILE ON EX C HANG E? I learned how to have faith in myself rather than depend on anyone else to achieve things that I want. WHAT WAS S OM ETHING YOU LE A RN E D T HAT Y O U NEVER EXP EC TED? Not everything necessarily happens for a reason but you can take everything that you find in life and keep it precious because you never know if it’s only going to happen once.
W HAT HA S YO U R J O U R N E Y BE E N LI K E SI N C E YO U R ET URN E D FROM E X C H AN G E ? I had a period of unhappiness and wanting to get away from everything that I grew up around so I decided to move to the same city as some of my exchange student friends for a change of pace, which was a poor decision. It took things getting worse to help me muster up the courage to move back home and then life finally got better. When I moved in with my exchange friends, I was still only identifying myself as an “exchange student” and I realized once I got there that it doesn’t necessarily matter to anyone else. That’s the tough part to realize when you come home. So accepting that you’re done with exchange is kind of relieving and it opens you up to the new happiness that awaits you with what you decide to do next. I think a lot of exchange students come home and hang on to this desire to be an exchange student and so they spend all their money traveling and doing things that in the end don’t really make them happier people in the future. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it leads to more heartache, really. Something that helps you move forward and move on is to look to the future and what’s going to be best for you. What’s going to be best for me 10 years down the line? Staying in this city where my exchange student friends are? Or going home and getting a degree and buckling down? No matter what, I plan on traveling again when I have the funds–these next 6 years I may not be able to. But I have every intention of going back and in the meantime, I’ll use the skills and the important things I learned while I was in Sweden and stay connected to old friends.
“ TAK E E V E RYT H I N G T H AT YO U F I N D I N L I F E AN D K E E P I T P R E C I O U S B E C AU SE YO U N E V E R K N O W I F I T ’ S O N LY G O I N G T O H AP P E N O N C E . ”
W H E RE A R E Y OU NOW? I’m back in Nebraska studying to become a geologist and feeling a lot happier since I moved back to the Midwest. W H AT H A S B E EN S OM ETHING P O S I T I VE A BOU T R E T UR NING FROM EXC HANG E? It’s great to rediscover cool things about your city or state or home that you didn’t realize before. You have a more adventurous outlook on life, you’re more willing to say “yeah let’s try this, let’s go to this weird restaurant.” You might come home and fall in love with your country even more.
M AT T IN SWE DE N I like fika. Fika is typically an hour or more out of your day when you just sit around the table or wherever, have a baked good of some sort–a sweet or a biscuit–and just relax and drink some strong, black, Swedish coffee.
AGE 21
FROM Hastings, Nebraska
E XCH A N G E T O Halmstad, Sweden
YE AR 2011-2012
I N YO U R B AC K YA R D Check out Toronto. Especially the St. Lawrence Market on a Saturday morning to get some breakfast and hop around to the different vendors to see what cool things they have. If you’re ever in Lincoln, Nebraska late at night and you’re craving that middle-eastern delicacy that you could only find on the corners of streets in Europe, head to the Sultan’s Kite for some great falafel and some awesome baklava. It really hits the spot.
A ROUN D EV ERY CORNER IS A NEW A DV E N T U R E