The Danish sustainability dream

Alireza chose to come to Denmark among lots of other options that he had, including in the US and Germany, because he was interested in majoring in sustainable energy. In this perspective, he thought Denmark was the best place to make the dream come true.

“At first, I was thinking that it is easy for an international to integrate in the society and get a job as a specialist, but it is way harder than I expected.”

“As a non-EU citizen, my path to PhD in AAU was not easy at all and required months of preparation including language tests, visa and so on. Applying for a position in a far country and getting accepted has a low chance, since most of the candidates are already determined and it is highly unlikely to get a position from a far distance.”

“I did not have any network in Denmark, so I just followed the normal applying procedure as most of other PhDs. But as everybody knows network plays an important part of the job hunting, in a way that I think that sometimes without having network, there will be no chance to get a job in Denmark.”

 

Volunteer work - always a great idea

“For me as an international it was not easy to keep the work life balanced, since we have to always work harder than Danes specially as a PhD in order to find our place in the society and workplace. However, I always did my best to follow my own hobbies and activities beside my job.”

Alireza puts a great value on volunteer work. It brought him many friends, help him meet many nice people that also had many things to teach him. Doing volunteer work helped him improve his Danish language skills, practicing Danish while socialising and having fun.

"I was social enough to get to know many people and groups. I was doing some volunteer work both in the campus and in the city."

The language and culture challenge

There were many challenges that he had to face. Being an international in Denmark was difficult:

“The first and most important challenge is language, that it needs a long time in order to master it and use it in daily life. Getting to know a completely different culture and try to integrate in the society is another burden in front of any internationals. Moreover, finding job which needs having network is another big wall ahead. I think the only way to overcome all these burdens is work, believe in your skills and work hard and I did so.”

“In my opinion, the best way to live in Denmark and AAU as an expat is to be yourself and stick to your roots and culture. In this way, you can be successful and get to wherever you what no matter what job or field of study you have.”