The power of advertising
KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology, ran an ad campain now and one of the ads featured the question "is there a shortcut to KTH". And an answer, that yes, if you take the preparatory year for those who didn't take enough science in High School, you are guaranteed a place.
Had it not been for the guarantee, my grades would not have been good enough to get me to Physics. I don't know if I'd go to KTH at all if I didn't get into Physics, but even if I did... that little stupid ad reminds me very precisely and painfully of how different a life could have been. There have been some choices and eventsin my life that changed the course of it enormously. But while, say, moving to Sweden, was a very apparent life-changing event, choosing KTH/Physics was not as clearly destiny-defining when I made it.
I saw this ad while on the subway with Gunnar the other day and I said that had in not been for the place guarantee, I would not have started dancing. Pretty much same went for him. For both of us, dancing is an important identity factor today. Not being a dancer feels absurd to me now, yet it's one of those things that are a consequence of the guarantee. My first "professional" writing experiences are pretty much all from KTH, I wrote/illustrated for the school magazine Osqledaren and I edited the little school paper of Physics. I'm very grateful for that experience now that I occasionally work with that kind of thing.
I would probably have met Stangel even without Physics, but the list of people I would not have met is long and I'm not publishing it here because tl;dr.
And then all of the events that followed on me dropping out, that are often memorable and important and relevant to my life as it is now. And all of the things I have been involved in thanks to being at KTH or staying with that crowd even after I stopped studying there.
Dear ad. Do you realize how different my life would have been if it hadn't been for the shortcut?
Had it not been for the guarantee, my grades would not have been good enough to get me to Physics. I don't know if I'd go to KTH at all if I didn't get into Physics, but even if I did... that little stupid ad reminds me very precisely and painfully of how different a life could have been. There have been some choices and eventsin my life that changed the course of it enormously. But while, say, moving to Sweden, was a very apparent life-changing event, choosing KTH/Physics was not as clearly destiny-defining when I made it.
I saw this ad while on the subway with Gunnar the other day and I said that had in not been for the place guarantee, I would not have started dancing. Pretty much same went for him. For both of us, dancing is an important identity factor today. Not being a dancer feels absurd to me now, yet it's one of those things that are a consequence of the guarantee. My first "professional" writing experiences are pretty much all from KTH, I wrote/illustrated for the school magazine Osqledaren and I edited the little school paper of Physics. I'm very grateful for that experience now that I occasionally work with that kind of thing.
I would probably have met Stangel even without Physics, but the list of people I would not have met is long and I'm not publishing it here because tl;dr.
And then all of the events that followed on me dropping out, that are often memorable and important and relevant to my life as it is now. And all of the things I have been involved in thanks to being at KTH or staying with that crowd even after I stopped studying there.
Dear ad. Do you realize how different my life would have been if it hadn't been for the shortcut?