Seriously Sweden

"You ought to start taking your life a bit more seriously," a friend told me after talking to her about some *career* options I had waiting for me.

I was taken aback by her advice. It felt like she didn't know me at all. And from a fellow expat whom ought to have known that I actually took rebuilding a life here. But there's the rub: how do you build a life at 30 when everyone else is settling down with theirs?

 It seems like all that I have been doing here in Sweden is studying. Three years have passed since I moved here and during that time, I have always gone to some sort of class or enrolled in some kind of course. In between these were spurts of odd jobs that tided me over for a couple of months and some freelance jobs that have kept my bank account from running completely dry.

Then there was SFI (svenska för invandrare) which I hated but passed with outstanding remarks, there was SAS (svenska som andraspråk) which I hated even more and barely passed (because I was rolling my eyes at everything, the teacher, the classmates, the lessons, the classrooms), and then there was yrkesvenska which helped a bit with my confidence in speaking Swedish.

Then there were the handful of odd jobs, internships, and government programs designed to help people like me find work in Sweden. Three years of hearing the same positive encouragement has really made me doubt whether or not Sweden is indeed friendly to immigrants or if it is just an image they would want to project to the rest of the world. They say that language is key to Swedish society. I must have the wrong sort of key, then as there are hardly any doors opening for me at the moment. Yes, there are some opportunities that came, jobs for immigrants like me who need to start from the bottom before climbing up the Swedish social ladder.

I've worked as a babysitter, a tutor, a dog walker, a caretaker for the elderly, a freelance copywriter, a translator, an intern at an editorial bureau, and now, a part-time language teacher. I have worn many hats in three years in the hopes of getting a foot in the door but not one has fit right just yet. And still I hope that the right opportunity will come and I'd don that hat and never take it off for a long, long time.