The Scandinavian detour: Word on the Street
‘University will be the best time of your life’ is a statement with which I have a complicated relationship.
Universities UK report that the average age of an undergraduate student is eighteen. At that age, I was not at university. But I did have the time of my life. After graduating high school in America, I escaped the pressure of going to college. I moved to Sweden and lived a Scandinavian lifestyle, funded by my job at a pastry shop. I ate cardamom buns for lunch and sipped wine on the cobblestone streets of Gothenburg—nights that ended on dance floors and were debriefed about on the North Sea shoreline. I used my gap year[s] to heal from being a teenager—recovering from stress and disordered eating, like millions of other girls during high school. At twenty-two I was ready for University. But I wasn’t prepared, nor anticipating to be a ‘mature’ student.
I was on a beach in Split when I got accepted into the University of Leeds. It was a spontaneous trip with my friend Gabby, meant to cure our [not so] broken hearts. Instead, it turned into a celebration of my past three years in Sweden. A four-day weekend in Croatia was not uncommon among my European friends. A vacation to the South of Europe was taken, by the eyes of an American, like any other task. Whereas in Michigan, where I grew up, they announced their vacations like gender reveals. They were like a saved dessert, a treat after graduating college as you prepared for your post-grad job. Before that, school was expected to be everyone’s priority.
I wasn’t raised like that. I spent the first nine years of my life in Sweden, an era when I’d be tossed into the back of my parents’ Saab 9-5, sardined between my siblings for any holiday. It didn’t matter if we missed school, as long as there was a hotel bargain.
“You learned more from those trips than in school,” my mother tells me now. “The teachers gave up on trying to talk us out of it.”
I never questioned my family’s travel habits until we moved to the U.S. in 2009. I felt embarrassed that none of my classmates had similar experiences—the first of many cultural differences that would continue to emerge. For years, I defended a lifestyle different from that of the kids around me: why my lunch looked different, why we celebrated Christmas on the 24th instead of the 25th, and why I didn’t know the lyrics to my classmates’ favourite songs. I felt guilt for not inviting friends over—a decision that my parents often questioned. But I hid my Swedish culture to fit in.
Life continued, and time healed all wounds—an idiom proven true by my American accent and a stronger grasp of Fahrenheit over Celsius. We ate less Swedish food and embraced more American trinkets. Friends weren’t just invited; they were encouraged. No longer was I a Swede in America, but an American when I went back to visit Sweden: an identity crisis that’s a story for another day. But during my last year of high school, the cultural shame crept back.
The average age of an undergraduate student in Sweden is between twenty-two and twenty-four—a statistic I wanted to be part of. But I was a trailblazer, surrounded by seniors who had plans to go straight to college—expectations enforced by everyone except, it seemed, my parents. I had no desire to walk in my father’s footsteps; I wanted his jumpers, not his engineering degree. But Ivy League schools were worn like badges of honour, and gap years became the graduate’s scarlet A. Some of us weren’t ready for university, but our community wasn’t ready for change.
41% of U.S. college students don’t complete their four-year degrees. With the average tuition costing almost £29,000, nearly half of U.S. students pay that much for an uncompleted course of study. Still, college felt more like an expectation than a choice.
In the last month of school, I grabbed the graduation edition of our high school magazine. It featured a map of universities across America, dotted with the names of every graduate. Those who weren’t going to college, were listed under a bolded ‘Other’—worse than a walk of shame.
“What college are you going to?” This was the top question asked by adults.
When I told them I wasn’t, they tilted their heads. I could see their brains working in overdrive, picturing my fair skin in an orange jumpsuit behind bars.
“Oh,” they answered, failing to see a future beyond university.
The stigma made it clear to me that I had to leave. And as my friends packed their cars with department store stationery, I booked my trip to Sweden. By August, the guilt was a faint memory in my new, Scandinavian studio apartment. I travelled, worked, dated, and made new friends—without the burden of deadlines. I had the time of my life, and in the eyes of my American friends, it was ‘very European.’ But it doesn’t have to be—my U.S. passport looks like theirs.
At twenty-two, I applied to the University of Leeds. It was the end of my Eat-Pray-Love phase. By British standards, I was considered a ‘mature student’, but my hangover in Croatia when I received my acceptance said otherwise. That same night, my friend Gabby and I celebrated in Split. In the alley they called a bar, we met three British students from the University of Leeds. The prospect of knowing familiar faces was comforting, but our friendship was short-lived when I told them my age.
“You’re going into first year?” they asked.
It was a rhetorical question. Their tone sounded just like my teachers in high school [You’re not going to college?].
They laughed while I stood silent. I thought about my friends in Sweden who were going to university—none younger than twenty-three and some in their early thirties. I was too embarrassed to defend myself. Gabby grabbed my hand.
Three months later, I moved to Leeds. Their Northern hospitality more than makes up for the few times my age has been questioned. But I recognize the same guilt I felt at nineteen in the students around me—judging their own choices based on their cultural standards. It’s the human experience. Just yesterday, I complained about my age to my best friend, Nanna, in Sweden.
“We make fun of the nineteen year olds on our psychology course” she consoled me (She’ll make a great therapist).
But everyone’s life is different, with no right or wrongs. And there’s countless ways to live it. That’s the beauty of starting over; another shot at the best time of our lives.
Words by Britta Carlson
