If you are reading, this you just met with either Dr



Ben Rush, fall 2010:

If you are reading, this you just met with either Dr. Moss or Dean Lancaster and you think you want to study abroad. If you are like me then it is something that you wanted to do from your first day at Wofford and you really want to experience a city bigger than your home town and going to school in a urban environment where you can still get credit for your major. Considering all of these things you’ve only got one option: GO TO COPENHAGEN!

I lived in Copenhagen from August 22nd to December 18th 2010 and had an incredibly rewarding and challenging semester. It was a great opportunity for me to travel, study, and to meet new people from around the United States and around the globe. Denmark is a wonderfully safe and vibrant place to live and study and I think it is wonderfully suited to studying abroad for people that don’t have skills in languages outside of English.

My absolute favorite part of the DIS program is how much travel time is built into the program and your courses and how much time you get to travel on your own around Europe. I saw cities across Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Hungary, the Czech Republic, England and Spain in my travels both with DIS and with a group of friends. The core class that you sign up for has these things called study tours where basically you travel for a long weekend through Western Denmark stopping in towns and locations that are relevant to the program you are studying. Later on in the semester you go for a weeklong tour visiting two different places (usually one in W. Europe and another in E. Europe) that will give you perspective outside of the Danish one. That is a week and a half of travel that is already paid for where you only have to pick up the tab for one meal a day and whatever souvenirs you want. Awesome, right? Then in the middle of the semester you have two weeks to do whatever you want with. I chose to go on a DIS organized trip to the mountains of the Czech Republic where I got to do all sorts of adventure activities like rock climbing, repelling, spelunking, etc. and stayed in a castle with an awesome pub in the main floor. It was a great way to spend a week and to get out of the cities that you live in and travel to the rest of your time abroad. So the travel part of your time over there is so easy to do and so much fun. (A word to the wise if you are going in the fall and want to attend either Oktoberfest or Sensation White: book tickets and travel plans in advance, it will be easier to go to both and a lot cheaper too.)

The classes that I took were also really great. My core class was called Health and Human Disease and was in the Medical Practice and Policy section. It was an awesome class that was all clinical with a dash of science thrown in on the trips and in the lectures. You meet at a hospital with two physicians and a Medical student and go through different diseases that affect the body systems. You also learn practical skills like applying casts, sutures, CPR, etc. and if you are at Amager Hospital you will have a ton of fun with Johannes and Jens. All my other classes were great too and from a different perspective from the ones I’ve taken here. I encourage you to take mostly classes outside your discipline because I found that they are the ones that are the most enjoyable. Also the work load is a little less than that at Wofford so you aren’t going to find yourself staying up all night to prepare for a test or to finish assigned readings, unless of course that is the only studying that you do. Don’t stress about your schoolwork, I know it all counts but you are there to learn both in and out of the classroom so be sure to balance them both.

Another great thing about DIS is that Wednesdays are reserved for field studies. In these you go around to different areas of Copenhagen where your subject matter is in action. They are incredibly rewarding as they put a face on what you are learning and illustrate how these scholastic endeavors are put to use in the real world. This Wednesday is also the reason why your semester will fly by. Some students use the lack of class on Wednesday as an excuse to go out and socialize on Tuesday evenings, knowing they have the following day where they can get some sleep that is lost in the socializing. With days of rest on both Wednesday and on Sunday you have virtually two weekends, use them to get to know your city and its inhabitants.

Danes are a fascinating group of people. If you want to get the most exposure to them that you can and really understand what makes them tick then you have to live with them. Shared housing is a lot of fun and it is what I chose but it is also incredibly difficult to meet Danish people in this setting. The “Flogelshlogel” (a term of endearment used by those who lived in the Folkehøjskole housing) is a great place to live and study but don’t be fooled it is a LONG way from Copenhagen. This is both good and bad. It connects you to the people you live with in a way that shared housing doesn’t because you have the hour and a half train ride into the city every day by which you bond with the people you live with.

I think Copenhagen is great and enjoyed my time over there immensely. I encourage you to experience it for yourself. If you have any other questions please feel free to email me at rushbw@ and I’ll get back to you asap.

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