Why i left Pakistan

Why i left Pakistan  

I spent around 20 years of my life in different cities of Pakistan, i have my family, my friends, my childhood, teenage, my first job and so many other memories related to my motherland. Now it has been a while living away from all those things. Today i might not exactly remember, what i was thinking at that time, but i would like to document what i remember from that time when i decided to leave the country. Everything you achieve in your life cost you something. You loose somethings to gain somethings. 

I will start from the following picture

This is a picture from January 2004, the time when my life was going through one of the biggest changes in my life. I got admission and joined one of the most popular engineering universities of Pakistan. It was like a dream come true. I still do not have the words for explaining the excitement i had at that time. This is moment that most of college graduates in Pakistan can dream of . An example is that; this university is located in a province of over 30 million people and less than 800 were enrolled at the university at that time. How i got in, it is also a long story. I will write about that some other time.

At that time my father was a pensioner and jobless for six years. The only source of his income was the pension money. It was around 3500 Pakistani rupees. And our family expense was over 10,000 rupees per month. And there was no luxury in life. We never owned an apartment. Our family owned just two bicycles and the some savings for our education. All of his savings were going towards an end. The education is very expensive in Pakistan. All of my siblings were also studying. We were living in a small town named Taxila cantt near the capital of Pakistan. I was 17 years old, i moved to the biggest town in the country, with a totally different culture. The city is highly populated, have a huge industry, a lot of opportunities to grow. The negative side is high street crime, high stress between different ethnic, political and religious groups.

I grew up with the thinking that if you want to have a better economic and social stability than you must be educated. Since my childhood no one appreciate to do sports or other activities than just studying. The teachers threatened everyone that you will end up being a very poor person or drugs addicts if you do not study. The parents used to tell their kids that they have given up their dreams over their education and every second person you meet asks you about your studies. In Pakistan the difference between the rich and poor class is immensely huge.  You can notice it everywhere in society. The only feasible and sustainable way a middle class person can be richer is that if he/ she have a good education. The salaries of engineers, doctors, management staff and accountants are much higher than school teachers, bus drivers, restaurant persons or any other professionals.  Entrepreneurship and any relevant ideas were not there around me. Therefore the education and good job became a believe of my life.

Yes i was excited because i knew that i was going to become an engineer. It was studying at a state owned university, it was affordable as compared to private sector universities. The engineers were being respected everywhere in the society, they had reasonable incomes, their parents were proud, and they were enjoying nice rides as well. And then the dream bacame a reality. I graduated .....

This is a picture from March 2008 from the convocation. I was a graduate engineer. At that time i was working in a Hongkong based multi-national firm. I was earning around 16000 rupees a month. Things changed a lot between 2004-2008. My family moved to Karachi. My brother was in the final year of his bachelors of Engineering. My father was also working at a floor mill. Our family's income was around 30,000 rupees. And our expense was also somewhat close to that. I was owner of a motor bike. But.....

So many ground realities changed. During all those years the country's economy was on a continuous decline. Our family had a loan of around 300,000 rupees. We still did not own a house. Me and my bother were planning to study further as the bachelors was not considered as enough to get to the higher management in Pakistan. Most of the people were already enrolled into the masters programs in the country and the one who could afford to go abroad for studying went abroad. The biggest pressure were the loans. They were taken from the relatives. My father never took any loan in his entire life before i started studying in the university, and he was always stressed because of that. He could not pay them by any means. Our family's income and expense were matching and there was no way that we could afford to a pay a loan that was 10 times more than the total income of the family. My mother went through an operation. The medical care in a private hospital costed so much. Our family did not have any savings left for health care, higher education, buying a house and weddings. A normal home at that time was costing around 3-5 million Pakistani rupees and a normal wedding costed around 1 million rupees. So a person who earns only 16000 rupees can not dream of achieving these things over a year or in 5-10 years. I started doing MBA in the evening but due to the high tution fees i could not afford it and i quit after one semester. 

I was doing great in my professional life. I was happy with my social life. But the economics and future goals were not supporting each other at all. Raising prices for everything triggered this thinking of getting a better income. Going abroad for studying or work was popular among the graduates of my university. Me and my friends were always diccussing about these issues. Most of the time there were negative feelings associated to the future of young and educated people with in the country. Every second person's opinion was that it is better to live abroad and there were many people who were struggling to get out of the country to live a better life. The rich people were leaving country because the security situation was not good enough. With a Pakistani passport there were no possible ways to travel or work in many countries. And it used to cost too much time and money to get a residence for visit, studies or work in any developed country. A reliable survey at time showed  that over 80% people of Pakistan want to live abroad.  

I projected my life, many years ahead of the time. I analyzed all my available resources. I talked to so many people about different possible scenarios in future. I ended up with a conclusion that i have to leave the country for good. How i planned to leave, how many efforts i did for that is really long story. I will write about it in future. But after 1.5 years of my graduation i managed to moved to Sweden and i completed my Masters in one year. With the efforts of our whole family we managed to get rid of all of our loans.  And the most important thing that matters to me that my father and mother were very very happy.....

Erasmus report

Erasmus report

Host Institution: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Home Institution: Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

Written by: Usman Saeed (July 2014)

Part One
1-   Preparations:

Norwegian University of Science and technology, Trondheim (NTNU) was my first choice for exchange studies; I applied during my first year of Masters in International Project management and got nominated for the exchange studies. Therefore I was really excited. I applied for Erasmus in February 2013 and got nominated for Erasmus in March 2013.

The response of the NTNU international office was quite late. But they already said on the facebook page that they accept almost all students that are nominated for exchange. I was nominated for two semester in the mid of March 2013 and within a few days I submitted all the documents at the Chalmers International Mobility office after applying online (The information of applying online is provided by the Erasmus coordinator). But I received the official confirmation of admission from NTNU in the mid of June 2013. The documents include the learning agreement, transcripts from chalmers, copy of the passport, the print of the online application that has been submitted at NTNU.

After nomination I started the facebook group for NTNU International and Erasmus students autumn 2013 and in a few days the NTNU made it an official page. So there were a lot of prospective students that discussed many issues on the page, tried to communicate the information about residence, permit, costs, courses and especially future roommates on that page.

The insurance was covered by Kammarkollegiet. The information can be seen on the following link

http://www.kammarkollegiet.se/sites/default/files/insurance_during_education_abroad_student_ut_1102.pdf

The cost of living in Trondheim is around 8-10 thousand Swedish kroner per month. The Erasmus grant is around 200 euro per month. Therefore it is necessary to have own funding. Swedish citizens can apply for CSN.

Since I had a lot of luggage therefore I booked a train ticket from Gothenburg to Trondheim.

 2-    Accommodation:

NTNU do not assure the residence for the EU and Nordic country citizens, for the rest of the world they guarantee accommodation. Most of the Swedish students contacted Svenskar I Trondheim group on facebook or used their personal contacts to find the accommodation in the town. The cost of accommodation in the town is around 3500-5000 Norwegian kroner depending upon the location and size of the room. Normally the rooms are shared.

For non European students NTNU provide a booking code to book an accommodation. SIT is an organization that has thousands of houses in Trondheim, there are many student villages spread around and in the city. I got the house in the biggest student village called Moholt.

Figure 2:  Moholt student village

In moholt there are two kinds of houses, one is in Moholt Alle, and they are relatively new and modern. The other one are Herman kragsvei, they are relatively older and cheaper. In moholt the student apartments are shared between 4 students. The room was around 10 square meters and was furnished. The kitchen and bathrooms were new and two students shared one refrigerator. There was a dishwasher in each apartment in Moholt Alle. All students were responsible for cleaning of the common rooms, if the common rooms were found dirty then all of them was fined by SIT. So some houses have cleaning problems and some houses had very good coordination between the residences. Since it was a multi cultural environment, therefore every house had its own story. In short it was a great fun experience to live at Moholt and I personally recommend everyone to get a room in Moholt, because it is the center of student activities. A lot of student bodies have basements in the moholt for gathering and parties. International student union, International club of Trondheim, Erasmus students’ network and some students also organize a lot of parties in the basements and their apartments throughout the semester.

 The monthly rent for a room in Moholt Alle was 3355 NOK and the security deposit for the room was 5000 NOK that has to be transferred at the time of signing the contract.

The video of the house in Moholt Alle can be seen on the following link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66LZVsGhzsU

Moholt is at a walking distance of 20-30 minutes’ walk from both Gløshaugen and Dragvoll campus and just 10 minutes by bus. Many students buy the bicycles at the start of the semester and sell them before departure. The monthly bus card called the T-card can be purchased from www.atb.no .

There is one big laundry in the moholt. The laundry costs around 20 NOK for one run. The laundry cards are provided by SIT and they can be recharged online. There is a smaller laundry at moholt alle as well.

Figure 3:  Laundry at Moholt

   3- Language:

NTNU offers free Norwegian language courses to the Erasmus and international students. For getting admission in the courses the students have to apply in time.  The information about the course is provided on the following link

http://www.ntnu.edu/studies/international/norwegian-requirements-and-courses

If you think that you are better in Norwegian language than level 1. Then they take a test before the start of the semester and if you pass that, you can be given admission at level 2 or level 3 depending upon the test results.

 The basic Norwegian language can be learnt online as well on the following link. It is a very good online resource made my NTNU. It has the curriculum of Norwegian language level 1.

http://www.ntnu.edu/now/intro

    4-Social Activities:

Trondheim is known as the best student town in Norway and the reason for that is the social life. There are so many opportunities to do an unlimited amount of activities. The city has three universities and over 30,000 students. The biggest student society is student samfundet I Trondheim. It organizes a lot of events for student throughout the year. It runs totally on volunteer basis and if you work at student samfundet, you can make a lot of Norwegian friends.

Figure 4 Student samfundet i Trondheim

Every second year it organizes the biggest cultural festival of Norway named UKA. There are over 1500 volunteers that work on UKA, it sells over 80,000 tickets and it lasts for almost the whole month of October.

  

The office of international relations provides a lot of opportunities to make a lot of new friends during the orientation week. There is a lot of information provided about Norway, practical tips about living, things to do, exams, social activities and information about how to integrate in the Norwegian society.

Figure 5: A free bar b que party for international students organized by international office during the orientation week

Fig 6: International Students gathered for information and welcome meeting at Student samfundet on first day of orientation week. 

Fig 7: A lunch organized by international office on orientation day

It is easier to make Norwegian friend if we understand their social life. They normally hang out in groups and the groups are normally closed. For example you can be part of a football team, then you will spend a lot of time with that football, but you are not allowed to bring your friends in that group. Every Norwegian is part of some different groups and they spend a lot of their time in these groups. However they are normally shy and act very friendly when they are drunk. There are plenty of parties if you are part of a group to get closer to the locals.

On the other hand it is much easier to be a friend with international students. There were around 1800 international students around us during the orientation week. There were all from all over the world and they are quite open. There are three student organizations for international students, also having many Norwegian students as well in them.

1-    International students Union

2-    Erasmus Students network

3-    International club of Trondheim

Then some smaller countries and regional based organizations are also there. These organizations arrange a lot of events, parties, trips and activities for the students. ESN have a buddy program where they try to provide an international student a Norwegian buddy. But there are always more international students signing up than Norwegian students. You can find more information about these groups on their facebook groups as well.

Figure 6: International students on Norwegian national day (17th May)

SIT also have some activity houses in the student villages. Where you can go in the evening, play some games or take some coffee with the friends.

There are also some student bodies at each faculty and study programs. The funding to those student bodies is done by SIT and the departments. Besides these student bodies, there are also students in the student parliament.

Fig7: List of different student bodies at NTNU

For sports, NTNU have one of the biggest sports unions in Norway. It is known as NTNUI. It has more than 12000 active members and over 50 activities. NTNUI owns a lot of gyms, grounds and facilities around Trondheim, specially the student cabins. It provides a lot of opportunities to live a healthy and active life. More details can be found on www.ntnui.no. A lot NTNUI member have won many competitions on domestic and international level.

There are still more stuff that a student cannot simply find out in one complete year. There are also organizations like amnesty international, project management institute, teknologiporten, TED talks, bridge NTNU and so many other organizations that are working to make student experience valuable. And if you want to experience all of these, you should always be ready to go out and participate. It is an experience that will stay with you for forever as one of the sweetest memories of life time.

Just Learning is not enough

Since I am going through job search a lot of questions come into my mind each and every time I apply, get a feedback, and try to build a network or talk to the people about the opportunities. After a lot of brainstorming about the job search process, i have concluded that only learning is not enough, you have to prove that you are more than a certificate.

I can give you an interesting example of myself. I had 16 years of education including a four years Bachelors in an Engineering program, a certification in Merchandizing Merchandising management, five internships and one year of experience as a president of a student union during my final year. After that i had one semester in MBA (Evening Program) and one and half years of work experience until the middle of 2009 when i was just 23 years old. I moved to Sweden in autumn 2009 and since then i have completed 218.5 credits (Ects) related to Masters in Industrial Engineering and Masters in Project Management. To give an idea one year Masters Program has 60 credits. I have also completed Swedish for immigrant up to level C, and have worked for four years in evenings, on the average 140 hours/ month. These are all the stuff that i can prove on papers in the forms of certificates. What i have learnt from my personal interests by reading, learning online and social life cannot still be proven, and i believe that i am still learning every day.

After doing all that my job applications are still not successful. And therefore i am saying that learning is not enough until and unless you can prove it on a paper or in front of other people. I have read it so many times that there are better candidates from me, i do not have the right skills or they need something different. That prove that i am still not good enough to prove what i have learnt.

One of my favorite quotes is “Love what you do and do what you love”. But i believe that it was said in some context. And that context might be the opportunities. And sometimes it takes years of struggle to achieve what you love to do. 2 months ago i contacted many successful people online and asked them what they did in their life that made them successful if they think they are successful. Some of them said that they got the right opportunities and then they did what they loved to do. In the end the world only remember the successful ones. No one mentioned that how many times they have failed and how many were there with them who quit in the way.

Recruitment is a process that can lead you to something that you love to do. Since it is a process that has some inputs and some outputs. No matter how great data you have, if you do not do the right input, you cannot get the right output. And with experience everyone can learn the right way to put the right input. Right now i am learning this process; i do not know how long it might take me to do it right and better than I am doing now. People in the recruitment jobs do not have enough time to read the context of every application, they are just are a part of the process. Since i am a lifelong learner, I still have to learn a lot to master the art of job applications. Until now i have learnt some stuff that I am practicing in the limited time that I have now.

1-      Professional Network: I am trying my best to build a professional network on Linkedin by adding the right people, participating in the desired interest groups and following the desired organizations. Besides that i am trying my best to attend all the job fairs and find people related to my background. I am also attending conferences that can contribute in building network and enhance my knowledge.

2-      Reading: I am reading articles related to job search process.

3-      Talking to professionals about their life experiences in the profession.

4-      Writing applications for the jobs I love to do.

I am carrying out all these processes along 45 credits this semester. The quality of the output is totally dependent on the quality of efforts. In the end I have to prove to the people I am going to work, that I am the best person for the job I love.

Working opportunities in Scandinavia for Non European Students

The motivation behind writing this post is my recent interaction with different employers and students in Norway and Sweden. I have this feeling that cross-cultural communication and understanding can make both employers and the students comfortable during the recruitment process. As I have personally experienced the environment and the circumstances in which the foreign students pursue their education and apply for jobs, therefore I am sharing my thoughts about that.

I still remember when I graduated from school; I accidentally attended a seminar organized by a student visa consultant. I was never interested to move abroad and had never given a thought about it either. The consultant told people so many success stories without mentioning the real challenges of living a life abroad. I was a teenager. I got impressed by his speech. And I know that these kinds of businesses in all under developed countries contribute a lot in students’ mobility all over the world. The reason I mentioned them is that they always present studying abroad as an investment to earn a lot of money. Therefore I have hardly met any student that came to Scandinavia for just learning, they always have a hidden objective of staying and working and payback all the expenses of their education.

Many years later when I completed my Bachelors in Engineering, moving abroad for work or study was very popular. People were using big amount of savings, loans, selling their properties to pay the Human resource consultants for working in the Middle East. And a lot of them were planning for studying in United Kingdom, Canada, Australia or USA. The study visa process of all English speaking countries is very expensive and complicated. Every year they are making it more and stricter to limit the students to just education. Before students used to work part-time to pay their tuition fees and now because of laws and abundance of students, it is getting almost impossible. A middle class graduate cannot even imagine about studying in these countries. They demand a long history of a huge amount of money in your bank account to get a study visa, and there is no chance of work therefore you have to have enough money to pay all tuition fees as well. You have to provide all details of your family income, expenses and make them believe that you are just going there for studies. It is a complete process of self humiliation. At the end of education, there were some graduate visas, which they have stopped now. So investment in education is not profitable anymore. Therefore English speaking countries, education has become a luxury for rich people of under developed countries. I would like to mention some bright students who get scholarships and for them it is a different story.

The other way they see was to go to Middle East, work a lot there for a few years on a relatively low salary and then go as a skilled immigrant to these English speaking countries. Or make enough money in Middle East and then go for studying in those countries. In short for a person with the best education in under developed countries, it can take up to more than 5 years of continuous struggle to get settled in a developed country. A few can get lucky, but the mainstream is following this way. Every year this mainstream is increasing and the governments in foreign countries are reducing all possible way to stop this inflow of people. This is a story of the best talent in those countries and the rest, you can imagine.

Now it comes to the rest of the world. There is an additional challenge. It is language. Some people used to take French or German language courses during their bachelors so that they can go to Europe for studying. China, Russia and Far East Asia became popular later on. Many universities in the rest of the world started teaching masters courses in English. Therefore people changed their direction as well. Majority of these people were from middle class.

Swedish, Finish, Norwegian and Danish universities became very popular due to the free education and there was a big in flow of applications to these countries. Later on Denmark introduced tuition fees, all the pressure went to Swedish, Finish and Norwegian Universities and Swedish universities also decided to introduce tuition fees on non-European students. The purpose of writing about the study visas is that because almost all the people I met from under developed countries who are working in Scandinavia came here for studying. Even a lot of people from central Europe working here were university students here.

Now the real story job; all the bright students that applied to Scandinavia and after compete with thousands of other students get admission and move here. Most of them knew it before that it is going to be expensive to live here. I have already written about accommodation, food and other challenges, therefore I will focus on just job.

A student is allowed to work as much as he can in Sweden and Norway. There is no limit of working hours, but the biggest challenge was to find a job. After the financial crises the unemployment in Sweden was very high and due to a lot of students it was also not possible to get a reasonable job. Distribution of advertisements, restaurants and the newspapers distribution were the only sources of income for foreign students. There were also a lot of Swedish students in the town, but they already get some stipend and loans from the government, some European exchange students were having some financial support as well. The rest of the free movers were the most poor and tired people in the class. They could not socialize with other students due to jobs or cost of socializing. The salaries from restaurant jobs were between 40-60 SEK per hour, by advertisement job (Reklam) they used to get around 20-40 SEK per hour. The distribution of newspaper was the highest paying job, people used to get between 7 - 11 thousand Swedish kroner after tax. But it was a 7 days job; you start in the middle of the night and finish in the early morning. The weather conditions are tough and people faces serious health problems after working for a while. And your studies and social life suffer a lot. After working whole night it is hard to concentrate on the lectures the next morning.

After graduation there were no work permits in Sweden. People used to take another admission to continue their part time work or they used to apply for Denmark green card scheme. Denmark was in need of labor and they had this scheme for job search purpose. Denmark took a lot of foreign master’s graduate from Sweden through this scheme. But these guys again had to go through learning language and stuff. There are hundreds of people who have Masters in Engineering and medicine from Sweden and are doing restaurant, cleaning and newspaper distribution jobs in Denmark. Why these people do not go back? Because they get motivated by a few successful fellows who score a professional job in Sweden or Denmark and they know that if they will go back it will be hard to get a job in here. In short the numbers of unsuccessful stories are huge as compared to the successful stories. But they keep on struggling. Some give up and go back to their native counties or some other countries and some stop trying and just work.

Besides Danish green card scheme there was another work permit in Sweden. It was for the people who have completed 30 Ects in Sweden and then get a job that can pay minimum 13000 SEK before tax. Many of the people that were working for newspapers distribution, a few from restaurant and cleaning jobs got these work permits. Later on many people did a deal with restaurant and cleaning company’s owners to get these work permits, I mean they were getting fewer salaries, but the employers were paying the taxes. So Swedish migration board made many professions black listed. Now the employer has to provide a lot of details of his income as well to apply for a work permit for a foreign worker. 

The people, who got Swedish work permit, now have to work for at least 4 years to get a permanent residence. So all these skilled educated people are now doing odd jobs for the sake of a permanent residence status in Sweden. These numbers are big as well. The inflow of international students has already reduced remarkably due to the high amount of tuition fees. Some of these people on work permits are already trying to take language courses, and applying every now and then. Swedish industry has its basis on Engineering and Technology; therefore most of the universities are offering courses in these fields. That results in abundance of local graduates for the jobs. After them it is much easier to hire a European citizen and in the end the last option is a non-European citizen. Only large corporations can afford to go through all documentations.

There are a few other ways to get settled much faster than learning and work hard. But there is a question about ethics. First way is to marry a local. Swedish government has a lot integration plans for the common law partners of the Swedish citizens. They are eligible to get unemployment benefits and also the employment office helps them to get a job. The second category is people on asylum on the basis of some reason. They get paid, they get paid to learn the language, they get a permanent residence faster than a highly educated professional

Every year a non-European spend in Scandinavia cost them a lot until they get a job. The cost of one month is equal to the cost living of the over half of the year in their home country in some cases. Many job coaches stress on the socializing, ignoring the fact those Scandinavian countries are one of the most difficult places on earth to socialize, it takes a long time and money to become a part of this society.

After a critical discussion, I want to suggest the ideal way. If you want to get a good student life and job in Scandinavia, earn enough money before you come. Always take admission in the best reputed universities and the courses that have high demand in here. Live like a Scandinavian, do good studies and in the end you will get a good professional job. If not you will have a great experience of living abroad. Otherwise you will have to live like a struggling alien with very little knowledge about the society.

In the end there are many questions about these top talents from middle class in under developed counties. Do the employers know anything about what they gone though when they read their CV?  What is the real value of these people? Are they superior, inferior or equal than a local student who has hardly faced any big financial, social or legal challenge during their whole life? Why education has been made a business than a social learning?

Eating at School

Normally people think that all Scandinavian countries are almost similar, and I have always been asked from Norwegians that what differences I have observed between Sweden and Norway, same question is asked by Swedish people about Norwegians. The story is not different if you are in Denmark. In fact there are plenty of differences in all these countries but I am going to discuss the eating habits from school and I will compare it with Pakistani system in the end.

When I was in Sweden I read an article that about the food in school. Swedish kids get lunch at school since they start it and they get it for free until they graduate from the college (Called gymnasium). Even after graduation some people go to their college for eating, if it is nearby to save some money. Since they get it for free therefore on lunch tables most of the time they are complaining about the food. Therefore in almost all cities there are so many restaurants that offer lunch buffets. Because eating outside home becomes a part of their behaviour. All major companies have nice restaurants inside and some people who want to eat in the town go out of the office and eat there. You can get a whole catalogue of the weekly menus of lunch in the whole town. Also in the university’s website they publish the menu for lunch. When it is lunch time there are very long lines for getting the food. And the restaurants get very crowded. Coffee is also a part of Swedish life. Coffee breaks are the best way to socialize with Swedish people. You can ask almost everyone for a cup of coffee because they take these breaks often and even in the evenings a lot of people hang out at coffee houses. In Sweden you can get food from all parts of the world, because they travel a lot.

In Norway it is very different. In Norway parents prepare the lunch for kids before they drop them to school. It is called Matpakke. Therefore it becomes behaviour; most of the people in Norway are always equipped with the food, when they go out. One reason can be the prices of food in Norway. It is very expensive to eat outside here. If it is lunch time and you are in the university’s cafeteria, don’t worry you will get plenty of space. Even you will see a lot of people eating in their lunch boxes at the cafeteria. They have microwaves for the people to make the food warm. If you are travelling then matpakke is a good solution as well.

In Pakistan bringing lunch from home is considered as a childish behaviour and buying from school’s canteen is considered as a cool thing. Small children bring their food from home but also get a lot of pocket money to buy candies and other stuff. When they grow up they stop bringing lunch with them. One reason can be that due to house wives system our schools close between 1:00 or 2:00 PM and you can eat lunch at home. Normally the lunch time is between 1:00 to 3:00 unlike Scandinavia where it is around 12:00 PM. The quality of food is extremely bad at most of the canteens in schools, colleges and universities due to poor food regulations but still all the kids want to spend as much money as they can at these canteens. Most of the students do not even know how to cook and since they eat three warm meals a day therefore the sandwiches and fruits are not that common. Tea is drunk like coffee in Scandinavia. There is no free food for students anywhere from schools, colleges or universities. The children are never happy with their pocket money, they always want more than they have and it is the story of every family, in the morning kids are asking for more and more. When people enter universities they stop eating candies and when they start working they start bringing food from home. Because when they start earning, they seldom spend it on low quality food outside and prefer to take home made lunch at work. And one reason behind that is long working hours as well. 

Feelings that make you nervous

There are always moments in your life when you are paralyzed by some thoughts. These thoughts are normally about an event that can either excite you a lot or they can make you miserable. No matter what the results are you forget them after a while. If you become excited, this excitement stays for a while and then it seems normal to you and vice versa.

What I have noticed that the great feelings stay with your memories and the bad feelings normally fade away.  You cannot even remember them. If someone understand this phenomena they might not get the excitement that someone ignorant will have but they will get over the feeling of being a loser.

Right now I am going through such an experience. It reminded me of all my life changing experiences. Hope is the feeling that has brought me to this level. As I have talked about it that it is the situation that makes you a hero or makes you a zero. I know that this time will pass away and may be I won't remember a thing or maybe I will always look back to memorize this moment and the amount of joy in it.

There were times in my life when I felt like a complete failure and broke. And it took me a while to get over it. But when I see my achievements after those times it gave me a lot of happiness. But still nervousness comes in your way and sometime it is a great feeling being nervous.

To answer your curiosity I can tell you I have made it into top four in an organization in Norway. Today I am expecting the result. Since I was a teenager I had a believe that only education can give you the drive in achieving your goals. Therefore I have always been interested in studying in the most renowned institutions. Today I remember all those times when I tried and got what I wanted. My admission in many universities, offer of admission from NED University, when I got my first job offer, when I got my first student visa, when I was accepted at Chalmers, when I was nominated for an exchange studies. All these events were big for me. There were so many days and nights of efforts behind each and every event. I do not even remember the times when I failed, what I do remember is that these events made me what I am today.

Today I am nervous but I am more confident that no matters what happen today, I will keep on moving ahead. Now I believe more in giving others the benefits of my experiences. Now I am moving forward with the feeling that I really enjoyed this nervous feelings and it gave me the confidence to write.

Socializing in Scandinavia

The whole world is amazing. Its soil produces so many different kinds of products under same conditions. And one particular environment produces so many different behaviors in the people. Even two children born and grown up in the same family have different behaviors. And these differences are the beauty of life. If we want to standardize nature or people, it is practically impossible. But all these people have their own role in balancing the societies. By understanding and communicating our behaviors we can produce a better balance in the society in which we are all breathing. Scandinavia is one of the societies in today’s time that has set some standards. Due to many reasons it is one of the best places on earth to live. Therefore it is an attractive place for immigrants. A lot of governments are spending billions of dollars to settle the foreign immigrants based on their residence permit. But the challenges related to immigration are really huge. Human behavior is something that takes really long time and consistency to chance. Sometimes it takes more than two generations to have a complete integration. A lot of universities are doing studies on global immigrations and therefore it is interesting to learn from experiences of the individuals in another society.

Since I am not a social scientist, I am just reflecting on the basis of my experience in Scandinavia. I am sure that every person who has lived here in Scandinavia has his/her own story. During my first two years I spent most of the time with Pakistani community, and later on I spent most of the time with Swedish people at work and living with exchange and international students.

Starting from my early days, all the universities in the Scandinavia has an office for international relations. People in these departments are working really hard to deal with students from all over the world. Since the inflow of the students in different universities is quite different, therefore their experience in handling students from different regions of the world. Believe me it is very exciting and very annoying job at the same time. There are lot things that are normal for the people living in here and they are really strange in other parts of the world. And due to different understandings of the same information, a massive amount of questions has been received by the international offices. Their experience in dealing with a particular group of students becomes very good and with some groups it never becomes that comfortable. For example the majority of the students in Scandinavia are Europeans these days. So a major number of orientation activities fit well according to them and they are not that good in case of international students from other regions. On the other hand side there are two kind of students, the ones who are open to learn all kind of new experiences and have the passion to integrate and the others that are curious but really shy or reluctant to try new experiences. Both kinds of students end up in different experiences of living abroad.

There is a lot of information available by student magazines, local online English newspapers and international offices for the practical guidelines to survive in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Ways of social integration and general information about Scandinavian people and their behaviors, therefore I am not going to write in detail. General information is that due to cold weather, less population density and good social system, Scandinavians are much more isolated than other parts of the world. It is a difficult task to make and build connections here. It takes a long time to make a friend but once they are your friend, they are friends forever. They are different when they are drunk and alcohol is a big help when it comes to socializing in Scandinavia. A common friend is always an advantage; otherwise the people here are not that good at socializing with a stranger. Modesty, sports and healthy life is one of general priorities in the culture.

Pakistani students in Sweden, Norway and Denmark are much more closed community, even more closed than Scandinavian society. There are many reasons behind that

The first and more vibrant reason is source of information. Majority of students that come from Pakistan do not do much research about the local society and specially the student community. Most of them apply in many countries for education and depending upon the admission and visa availability they take their final decision. There is another believe in Pakistan since Afghan war, that it is better to live anywhere outside Pakistan than Pakistan. Therefore coming to a developed country is already considered as a great opportunity. No one thinks that how much it is going to cost them, how long it will take to integrate, what kind of job opportunities are there and what are the growth opportunities for the people with similar backgrounds. They normally do not have any idea about what they are going to face. Since they do not have enough information, therefore they face enormous amount of cultural and economical shocks in the early stay and they feel their behavior as an alien in the society and in the end they hang out with the people from similar background.

On the other hand majority of Scandinavian population has wrong information about gradate Pakistani students. Media in Europe always covers the stories of regional war, some stories of gender discrimination, corrupt politicians and extreme side of the south Asian society. The main stream is never in the stories in the news channels. It is totally different from what they read and listen. Since Scandinavians are shy they never go and talk to these students, so these kinds of misunderstandings continue.

Second major reason is the economical differences. I have already written about it before. Cost of socializing is really high. Since the rents are high therefore Pakistani student share their accommodation in the low rent areas of the city and the local students can afford relatively expensive housing close to the university due to reasonable financial aid and study loans from the government. Pakistani students avoid eating outside and spend money on café; therefore they never get the opportunity to socialize with the local students during free timings at the university and after university. The sports are also expensive as compared to home.  Due to shared accommodations they do not invite people over as well. Some guys who do part time jobs do not get enough time to socialize as well.

People with good information about each other and reasonable economical balance can easily socialize from both regions. But here it hits the third challenge.  That is difference in values. In Pakistani culture there are three major values

1-      Family

2-      Money

3-      Education

4-      Religion

For a Pakistani family comes first, every thought and every act is done to make the family life better. All the assets are shared, and due to inefficient social system, people in the family are dependent on each other, children on parent, and adults on each other and older people on young people. 2^nd money can give you status, respect and everything you want in the society, 3^rd is education, if you have education you have a good respect and finally the religion. Everyone believes in religion and you will hardly find people who do not believe in religion.

On the other hand the Scandinavian society has following major values

1-      Equality

2-      Individuality

3-      Modesty

4-      Society

When Pakistani students meet Scandinavian students, they talk about family and relations, it makes the counterpart uncomfortable. No one here do that until they know each other very well. They think that they should be respected for their degrees, but it do not give them any benefits, it is really hard for them to believe that people do not believe in God. Social boundaries, food and drinking habits are totally different in both societies, therefore when they are in social gathering in Scandinavia they look kind of mysterious to the local people. And this uncomfortable attitude between both groups creates a long distances. That leads to three kinds of Pakistani students. The ones who start drinking and since they are uncomfortable with their fellow Pakistanis on this behavior, they just hang out with the non Pakistanis. The other group tries to hang out with both of them but do not drink and keep their choices; Scandinavian people respect that as well. And the third group is the closed group of a few Pakistani students who just hang out with a small group and stay online all day and night and talk to the people back home. These students do not learn much from the local society and even after staying 5 years in Scandinavia they can hardly speak a few sentences of the local languages.

I personally know a lot of examples of all three kinds of people. Everyone has its own reason for their decisions of living their lives. All of them know that how and how much they can get involved in the society. This kind of behaviors do not just exist in Pakistani students, they exist in most of the Asian societies. For example people from China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Africa and South America. Students from North America, Canada, Australia and major regions in Europe face lesser cultural shocks in Scandinavia and get themselves easily comfortable in these societies.

From the Scandinavian point of view, the students who have already lived abroad understand the situations with international students better. These are the people who always move forward to invite you at their places and introduce you their friends. They are a little different from the main stream Scandinavian and these outsiders in the society are a real help for the foreigners to be a part of the society.

Based on my experience I would like to give some recommendations to foreign students in the Scandinavia and the Scandinavian people who want to integrate foreigners in the society.

As a foreigner, try to understand the values of the local society and respect them. Imagine if a foreigner in your own country want to bring his/ her system would you like that or not? Avoid getting trapped in an international bubble or people from your own country. Keep a balance in all of your social gatherings. Learn from other cultures, share your culture. Difference will  be there, try to focus on common interests like sports, food that you can share, social work, topics that you can discuss, organizations with common interests and celebrations. Love everyone.

As a local student, try to understand that there is plenty of experience from other countries; international students are a good source of learning. If you respect other’s values they will respect you more and will be ambassador of your culture in their home towns. Since Scandinavian economies are based on exports, therefore relationships with all foreign countries will bring a lot of benefits. If you think that you have better values in your society, export them. And a stranger is a friend whom you have never met before.