Daniel, Louise and Arendse are having a good time at the højskole…

A few months ago, I met three students at Ry Højskole for a chat…

Who’re you and what are you doing here at Ry Højskole?

My name is Daniel and I’m a student here at Ry Højskole. I have chosen friluftsliv (outdoor life) as my main subject. We canoe and kayak a lot, and we also do some climbing. Besides, we go on a lot of excursions and cook our food in the open.

What’s the best thing about attending a højskole?

I think the best thing is the social fællesskab (community, togetherness) that you get here. You really feel that you create a common space. No matter whether you’ve talked with someone a lot or just a few times – when you’ve been here together with another person, you’ve got something special together. I think that’s quite unique.

Who’re you and why are you here?

My name’s Louise and I started at Ry Højskole since my main subject is journalism, and I’d love to get admission to the school of journalism afterwards, so I’ve been goal-directed in order to become a skilled journalist.

Could you please describe a typical day at the højskole?

In a typical day there are 500 udvalg (committee) meetings [she laughs], sports, activities, fordybelse (absorption) in some subject, and then all the outdoor things: Getting out and sitting around a bål (fire, fireplace), or playing volleyball or something else. So there’s a lot of variation! Really many things have been squeezed into one day, even when you sometimes think it’s impossible!

Who’re you, and what brought you here?

My name is Arendse, and I started at Ry mainly because I had been visiting the place before and got a really good gut feeling. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do here; in the first place I wanted to write; now I’m at friluftsliv [FREEloftsleev], and I’ve been taught song writing and – a lot of subjects I didn’t imagine would mean anything to me, but they do that now… I think that’s very much what it’s really all about: That you get room to develop yourself, and a lot of inspiration from other persons. You get some thoughts you hadn’t thought before; you discover things you didn’t know existed… That’s the great thing about højskolen (the højskole), I think.

What kinds of new things did you discover?

I’ve discovered that things don’t have to be in a certain way in order to be right. I feel I’m finding something every day… Take for instance Inge. She’s our art teacher. She had been working as a nurse for 10 years before finding out she wanted to be a kunstlærer (art teacher). It is quire inspiring that you can omlægge (change, rearrange) your life like that, and discover it quite late. It’s great that you don’t have to think the whole time, that everything doesn’t have to be like this or that, and that you’re just supposed to try out a lot of things to find out what lights your own fire.

Have you got some advice for people considering to spend a term at a højskole?

Daniel, Louise and Arendse:

Go to Ry!