It all started around the beginning of 2013. I was thinking that I had got pretty complacent with my job, such that things looked like uninterestingly just a matter of routine. Moreover, there were no serious contenders of places to go for a conference. I thought that I should have planned for the next journey abroad, a Ph.D. journey.
Why would I want to study abroad? For me, living abroad is like a great way to challenge my survival ability. I literally have to depend on my own not only to study at a new school (and finish it), but also to meet a lot of new people, to try new food, to learn communicating in a new language, etc. Overcoming those challenges brings the sense of “Yes, I can” as well as lots of invaluable stories along the way, and, believe me, it is totally fantastic, romantic, BOOMBASTIC (Shaggy, 1995)!
No, it doesn’t mean that studying abroad is a neverending happy and sunshine-lit journey. There are study obstacles, irksome people, unlucky situations, lonely days, etc.; but, I do believe that if we have a good intention in every single thing we do, everything will finally turn out to be fine. If things still seem wrong, well, just remember that… everything will flow (Suede, 1999).
Anyway, back to early 2013 (late 2012, to be exact), I made a wishlist of countries that I’d love to go for studying. My main criterion is simple, the countries must be the places I’d like to visit. Somehow I had to add the factor of the country’s higher education quality. Due to the inclusion of that factor, it is a pity that interesting countries like Turkey, Greece, Hungary, and Ukraine, were excluded from the consideration. Based on that personal criterion, my wishlist consisted of these countries in the First Pot:
Swiss
Denmark
Austria
Sweden
(wait, this seems like a group drawn for Euro qualification… haha)
[caption id="attachment_347116" align="aligncenter" width="880" caption="European countries according to... somebody"][/caption]
The Second Pot contained the mainstream giants: