Submitted by Mallory Smith on the 2014 fall semester DIS (Denmark’s International Study Program) program in Copenhagen, Denmark…
The past 3 1/2 months have flown by! The fact that my time in Denmark will be ending so soon is extremely unsettling. Classes these last few weeks, however, have been incredibly interesting and stimulating!
This past week has been filled with different field studies and guest speakers! For my Leadership Across Cultures class we had the author of our text book, Waldemar Schmidt, who is also a very well known CEO, come and address our class. He focused on how to maintain the balance between personal life and business and spoke about how he managed that balance and was even put in that situation in the first place!
Yesterday, my Epidemiology class went to different research facilities in Copenhagen. At one of the facilities, we learned about the Danish Registries. These are unique to Denmark and is a registry filled with all the health information regarding every individual living in Denmark. It has birth, death, hospital admittance, disease detection and many other facts and details available. While many people from the U.S. would think this is a gross invasion of privacy, the names of the individuals are kept private and as a result some incredible research is available at a very low cost. Afterwards, we spoke to an Epidemiologist who spends her time traveling the world looking into different strands of the same disease in different locations. Her story was incredibly interesting and inspiring. I realized that in my professional career I would love to pursue a similar track, but from a Public Health lens.
Today, my Scandinavian Classical Music Class had a special (interesting) performance. My professor is an electronic music composer and has been working on a new performance with a co-worker. This performance was titled “Mindful Gap” and was essentially interpretive dancing to electronic-ish music that also involved talking. The entire performance was meant to focus on Denmark’s oil use and how sometimes oil has necessary uses, but it is also having a horrible effect on our world. Interestingly enough, you could understand the theme throughout the performance. I think I have become desensitized to strange art because I wasn’t as taken-aback by this performance as I would have been when I first arrived.
Speaking of strange art, after the performance, my Women, Art, and Identity class went to an art exhibit in the Royal Library called “The Weather Diaries.” It was a series of images (half paintings, half photographs) focused on the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland. The images were extremely interesting, engaging, and surprisingly telling about each culture. (I also noticed I was able to approach the paintings critically with tools I never had before this class).
My time in Denmark has been incredible. The thought of leaving is so heartbreaking that I am actually researching internship/graduate opportunities here!