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I’m Mallory MacDonald, a rising senior honors student. I study psychology and biology in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. During the summer of 2021, I studied in Denmark through the Danish Institute for Study Abroad.
Ok, I’ve finally made it to Denmark after 15 hours of travel, three plane rides, and standing in a 2-hour long line to get a COVID test. But, I still have five days of quarantine in my apartment. I’m one of the lucky students that get to quarantine with 8 other strangers instead of a hotel by myself. But, maybe hotel food would have been better than learning to online shop in a foreign language. One of those first nights, the nine of us gathered around our dining table (probably bought from IKEA) and played a drinking game called BUZZED with water. One of the cards said, “Drink if you have ever studied abroad and it changed your life.” At this point, none of us could say anything. However, that is still one of the most iconic moments of the trip. It was the first time that any of us were actually in another county doing the thing that people talk about changing their whole life.
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| My flatmates. |
During Summer 2021, I went to Copenhagen, Denmark for six weeks through the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, or DIS. I choose this program because of the classes they offered. However, once in Denmark, I fell in love with the location. My classes were on the busiest streets in the middle of Copenhagen. There was no AC in our classrooms, so we kept the windows open. This probably got in the way of my learning because I was listening to the city pass by outside. The first three-week course I took was The Psychology of Criminal Behavior. Each day we had a guest speaker come in to talk about their experience with criminals in Denmark. It was an interesting class because criminal behavior and how it is treated is very different in Scandinavia. This course covered a psychology elective I needed for my degree. The second course, Humanitarian Law and Armed Conflict, I took because it sounded very interesting and unlike any class I have taken before. My advice: take the random class. I learned more in this class than … than … my intro to psychology course.
My housing building mostly held other DIS students, which I enjoyed. DIS offered two other types of housing options: staying with a host family or a Kollegium, where you would live with other Danish students. Each offers different pros and cons. However, there is a multitude of reasons why I love my housing. For starters, it was two blocks away from Nyhavn, the most pictured place in Copenhagen. Secondly, the first thing I saw out of quarantine were trampolines. Yep, you read that correctly! Copenhagen has sidewalk trampolines right along the harbor.
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| Me on the trampolines. |
To travel around the city, I get a metro card. While 40 percent of the Copenhagen workforce uses their bikes to get to work, I thought using a metro card would be a big enough lesson for me while I was there. And I was right! The first day we had in-person classes I got on a train going the opposite direction. Being late to the class taught me to know to take the right train with more time than needed. Public transportation also became the one place that I needed to wear a mask after my first three weeks there. COVID-19 did not take away from my study abroad trip but added to it. It was very eye-opening to see people’s attitudes towards different policies put in place or the vaccination. My program also limited the travel that we could do to other countries. While it was not appreciated during the moment, I’ve come to appreciate it since I’ve been back, allowing me to explore Denmark. I went to Aarhus, the second-largest city, where one of my teachers grew up, a nature reserve with beautiful cliffs called Mons Klint, a Viking village, a fishing town, Kronborg Slot (aka Hamlet’s Castle). All places that I would not have seen if I would have been allowed to travel to different countries.
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| Friends biking in the small fishing village. |
My study abroad experience was not what I dreamed how it would be in 2019 when I first applied. However, in 2021, it was so much better than I could have ever imagined! And it for sure changed my life!
Psychology & Biology Mallory MacDonald spent the Summer 2021 term in Copenhagen, Denmark with DIS with support from the Honors College Study Abroad Grant & our Office of Study Abroad Scholarship.
You can start planning your adventure abroad today! Dive in to our Explore page at https://studyabroad.uark.edu/explore/index.php, and start your program search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/
