Just before Christmas 2017, I got this great news that my application to the STINT Teaching Sabbatical program had been accepted and I was moving to Singapore during fall 2018 with my family. I had been accepted as a STINT Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). This teaching sabbatical is a national scholarship by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT), that Swedish universities can nominate candidates for each year. I was lucky to be nominated by Umeå University during fall 2017 and even luckier to be chosen to be a STINT Fellow at NTU in 2018.
Hence, after accepting this amazing opportunity, there were a lot to plan during the spring and a lot of questions going through our heads. One thing was the new family situation. After I applied for the fellowship, we got the notice that we were expecting our first child. Still we decided that it would be a great opportunity for the whole family to be able to move to Singapore and my partner could stay home with the baby.
However, not actually having the baby, a name or the social security number became a bit of a insecurity the start. Still we started the planning process and decided that prepare as well as possible as quickly as possible during spring.
The first ToDo list:
- VISA. When and how to apply. What kind of VISA could my partner apply for since we’re not legally married?
- Where to stay? We had both been to Singapore before and therefore we decided on staying on (or close) to the NTU Campus. We thought that this would increase the time we could spend together as a family since my commute time would decrease.
- Book a planing trip to Singapore before the baby is due. The best time we decided on was in the beginning of March.
But the very first thing to do was to inform my colleagues and my boss about the great news that I had been accepted in the program as the first ever from my department and the “great” news that I was going to be away during the fall…
[expand title=”Click to expand some useful links:” swaptitle=”Useful links:”]- Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
- STINT – The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education
- STINT Teaching Sabbatical
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