Some Tips

 I have never wondered whether or not to do Erasmus. Even at the beginning of my first year I knew I had to do some exchange program. I was already a foreign student in Madrid, Spain, but I wanted to give it a try.

1.   My first step was to find and look at the list of offered universities. I guess you all know that your university has contracts with certain other universities. You need to choose form that list. The truth is I did not know that at the beginning. So, one beautiful day I found the email address of the University in Hawaii and I sent them a message. I wanted to know whether I could do exchange in Hawaii. It would have been great, right? Well, they were very nice and responded quite fast. They said they accepted exchange students and that their fee was about 10, 000 dollars. Of course, I gave up my beautiful idea to be an exchange student in Hawaii. I found the list of universities my own university had a connection with and I took a look at it. I found several universities I liked depending on the language, of course. You cannot go to a country whose language you do not speak. Well, you can if it is Slovenia, but they are cool and they accept English-speaking students. So, I liked four cities in Italy and one in Slovenia.

2.  As a second step, I had to arrange my places of choice. I tell you, this one could be difficult. How do you choose the order of the cities you want to go to? Maybe some students know in advance where exactly they want to be. For example, Venice is my favorite city and if I could go there (and if I had the money…) I would definitely go. My case was different. I love Italy and I wanted to go there, but I had to clue in which city exactly. I chose four cities and started applying some logic to the order I was going to put them in. My number one Italian city was Milan because it is the capital of design and I was (and still am) interested in graphic design. Milan has some famous private academies for arts and design and those academies offer (expensive) courses. My second Italian choice was Bologna. I had Erasmus friends in Madrid who had come from Bologna.  They told me Bologna was a small nice university city and that I would like it very much. My third Italian choice was Sienna. If I have to be honest, I do not know much about Sienna, but I thought it would be similar to Bologna: nice and cozy university town. My last Italian choice was Rome. I have been to Rome and I know what it is like. It is one of the oldest cities, obviously, but it is disorganized. The means of public transport, such as buses are disorganized. There is almost no metro because everywhere under the ground there are valuable remains of archaeological interest. My last choice was Maribor in Slovenia. I am in love, passionate, obsessed with skiing. I knew Maribor as a place of ski competitions at very high level. I even had one ski instructor who was doing shows in Maribor. Also, Slovenia is a Balkan, Slavic country, just like my own country. After two years in Spain, Slovenia seemed like going back home.

3.  Find out the procedure in your university. During my first year in the university I took a look at the procedure. The most important part for me was the language exams. Why? I had no clue how to speak Italian, but I had planned to learn it before the exams. During my first year at the university I saw that the language exams were in February. I was calm and happy. I had about five months from the beginning of the second year in October to sit down and study Italian. It is close to Spanish I thought, so it should not be too difficult for me. I went back to Spain in my second year and guess what! I opened the main page of my university and what a surprise, the exams had been moved to be at the end of October and in the beginning of November. I had only twenty days to prepare. I lost two or three days wondering whether or not to start studying Italian and whether or not it was worth it

4. Language exams. I decided that studying Italian was totally worth giving a try. I really wanted to apply to universities in Italy and I thought it would not be bad to try. I opened Google and I typed “profesores de italiano en Madrid” (Italian teachers in Madrid). I found one I liked and I sent her a message. She responded and I was happy to make an arrangement with her. She was one of those teachers who would come to your home for the lesson. I met her a day or two afterwards. She was young, twenty-four years old, and very very sympatric. She started talking Italian to me right away. I could understand due to its resemblance to Spanish. We had a class every day for two hours for the next twenty days. At the end of this period I had to take my two exams: Italian and English. I do not remember which one was first. English was easy for me, luckily. Italian was not so easy. I was still new to the language. I did fine, despite my lack of enough knowledge. I got C1 in English and B1 in Italian. It was one of the highest grades. That was due to the fact that the exam was very easy, but also because of my efforts. The exams consisted in two short essays, such as “Do you have a pet? What is its name….?” or “Write an email to a lady who is going to host you in the UK. Tell her about yourself”. There was a listening part. In our case the listening part was read by the teachers who were supervising the exam. There was also a reading and speaking part. Speaking is the hardest in any new language. It sucks, but it is necessary. 

The perfect Erasmus place is waiting for you.

Photo gallery