By Allison Su

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This piece offers reflections on my semester abroad in Copenhagen, highlighting the class that changed how I think about everything and how it will continue to impact me.

People say studying abroad changes you. My semester abroad in Copenhagen definitely changed me. I suffered through an identity crisis, but I truly believe I have changed for the better. One of the biggest influences of my time abroad was my core course, Sustainable Development in Northern Europe. I already had my doubts about capitalism before the semester started, but this class tore down the walls of capitalism’s facade and exposed it for its ridiculous notions of infinite economic growth (which I see everywhere now!), poisoned structure that depends on poverty, and obsession with technology over people. Capitalism is so deeply rooted in all of us that I see my peers consistently choose money over passion, money over morality, and money over truth. In the beginning, money is security, but eventually money becomes power. But when is the amount of money–and power–we have enough?

I, personally, do not wish to be mega-rich. I used to think that would be ideal–I mean, who doesn’t want to get rich? The problem, however, is that money is limited. Whether or not money should be limited, the more that the select few hoard their wealth, the less that millions of others will have to live comfortably or even survive. Again, capitalism is built on poverty. While I don’t want money to crowd my mind all day every day, of course it is something I worry about. I have to. We are all trapped in a system where money matters. Even if I am pressured to get a job that pays handsomely, if it’s unethical or meaningless, I don’t think I can do it. After what I’ve learned and what I know now, it seems like a waste of time–and a waste of life.

It took a whole class to get me to this point of critical thinking. This class was an epiphany that opened my mind to how the system we live in can be different and how I can resist capitalism. I need to reevaluate what I want to do in the future, and to do this, maybe I need to emulate the Danish education system. After high school, it is completely normal for students to take a couple of gap years to figure out what they want to do before college. They have more time to think about what matters to them. I’ll be graduating college soon, and I may need some time to myself, so that, like all the Danish students, I can figure out how to do what matters most to me.

Part of me already knows what matters most to me, what calls to me each and every day: storytelling. Copenhagen was full of stories, and I tried to find them all by living like a maximalist, doing and eating everything I possibly could because my time was limited there. I got to know Copenhagen so well that I felt at home, yet something also wasn’t quite right. 

I felt a bit lost in myself, and I realized it was because I wasn’t doing enough work. As crazy as that sounds, I felt like I was playing too much, spending too much, doing too much. Perhaps I was spending so much time looking for other stories that I forgot about my own. I lost sight of who I was and who I wanted to be, a consequence also of rushing into change in the fall so I could have the opportunity to graduate a semester early. Yet I appreciate the clock that ticked down the time to my last day in Copenhagen, as it created a sense of urgency. There were still things I missed out on, but I know I’ll be back in Copenhagen someday. I’ll take my friends and family around the city with me and show them everything I have come to love.

I will show them what now almost feels like a fairytale, in a faraway land called Europe. Within that land, there was a kingdom called Denmark, whose capital was Copenhagen. In the capital was the island Amager, home to Christianhavn and Refhsaløen.

I bring up these regions because they ended up being my favorite parts of the city. They were home to the gorgeous Opera House and Opera Park, popular outdoor street food market Reffen, a large warehouse of a contemporary art museum, the urban community farm Øens Have, and the famous Church of Our Savior with its spiral peak. They were surrounded by water and separated Amager from the main island.

Like me, Christianhavn and Refhsaløen are in the In-Between. I was certainly living in between worlds in Copenhagen, and I certainly am now as I question what it is to be American again. I will still be in-between come the end of the year when I can finally take after Denmark’s education system and figure out what to do after graduation–and with the rest of my life. It’s a monumental task, but like everything in life, I expect the journey to be a winding roller coaster that ultimately ends with a worthwhile breath of fresh air.

Process

Initially, I wrote this piece in backwards chronological order without even realizing it. I wanted to talk about how I had been chasing the Northern Lights all semester but never saw them, then use that as a metaphor for disbelief. The aurora was at the top of my mind when I started this piece, since I heard my friends and family in the states could see it. Following that paragraph, I touched upon my favorite parts of the city, which I didn’t even visit until the end of the semester, and finally talked about the most impactful class I had while abroad.

For the final draft, my mentor Anh encouraged me to completely reverse the structure of my essay. Doing this definitely helped me to better connect the many ideas I wanted to fit in this piece. It’s hard to distill an entire semester’s worth of change into 850 words, but I hope the ideas come through and that you consider visiting Copenhagen too.