How ERASMUS changes people's life

Hello all!

In this post I’d like to speak about my views on ERASMUS. As you could read by now on my blogs, I’ve written about a short-term (2 week) ERASMUS experience spent at Helsinki, one 2 month practical ERASMUS in Austria, and a 3 week Intensive language programme in the US. This reflection of mine perhaps wouldn’t be written if I didn’t gain so much experience Worldwide with ERASMUS. I hope, You'll find it inspiring!

I prefer short-term ERASMUS programmes, because they are the most intensive. In every kind of way. That’s why I always applied for shorter programmes. Due to the shortness of time, days are full and busy, schedule is as logical as possible, including well-planned hours full of activity. Short-term programmes can be organized by the host-university and members of Erasmus Student Network, but the person him/herself can plan his or her short journey as well.

If someone has short time at disposal, theoretically he or she will make use of every second of it. And this is the mathematics of my view. That’s my life-philosophy. And partly this idea came from ERASMUS. Your view might be totally different, but I think that in everyday life we tend not to care about how much time we have, how much could we do with it, with ourselves. It’s hard to define a typical student-life, or life in general, but perhaps by the ‘staying home’, ‘eating’, ‘watching serials’, ‘Facebook’, ‘sometimes partying’, ‘doing sports with friends’, ‘working/studying’ key-words I covered the greatest part of it. Yes, everyday life is like this, also for me, and I consider a person very lucky if he or she has a balanced life surrounded by friends, having a challenging work, loving the study field or profession he/she is having. But these characteristics are not reasons for staying passive, keeping things like this, not expecting anything more from ourselves or from life. Taking life and its opportunities seriously supposes a live presence and control upon our lives. It supposes thinking, planning, getting involved, desiring and working on it. On anything. Wanting to complete the list of key-words above, wanting to be more special persons, and wanting to live a life which can’t be described in three words, but way more, like colourful chapters of a book coming alive. That’s what I find important.

Those people who can’t tell me interesting stories about their lives, including their interests, experiences, ideas, phylosophies, journeys, happenings through which they tried something new and stepped out of their comfort-zones, don’t interest me so much. Are they boring? Not really, but anyway the discussion is not so comfortable than with someone else. This comes (unfortunately? ) with ERASMUS. And I’m not proud of this conclusion, but I just start feeling that I have more in common with people who are like me, with people who have done interesting things in their lives, love to challenge themselves, and life, people who can tell me new things, and people who are unique in a way.

When was it the last time You’ve packed your rucksack and went hiking in nature? Or when have you been last time in a theater? In the last year how many foreign cities have you visited? Did you go to swim, play a board-game or ice-skate in the last 6 months? I think the answers depend on people’s personalities (I know some people who would never visit a foreign country with a map, or just simply are not interested in traveling, or due to their very good friends and love-life are absolutely satisfied with what they own, and are not interested in new impulses), but then what can we talk about? And who are we? And what is our personality-like? What interests us and what defines us? ERASMUS helped me in finding out the answers for all these questions, and of course getting to know the world, and other people as well. If I could, I would make ERASMUS being obligatory for everyone in the world. Because what this kind of experiencing gives someone, it can’t be learnt at school, in the family, or by your lover.

I hadn’t experienced any long-term ERASMUS programme, which lasts for months, but I admit that it can have advantages, like getting a deeper gain insight the actual place, culture and building stronger friendships. On the other hand, it also has the risk of saying : ‘I will do this and that later’, and getting too comfortable, or even just lazily let days pass. Consequently my favourite scholarships are those, which are organized, where participants’ daily schedules include free-time activities, cultural programmes and of course professional development. In conclusion, regardless of time interval ERASMUS is a big adventure, hiking over Europe is a great thing, and living with open-eyes, trying to catch every opportunity of having a scholarship, studying and living abroad is a big bunch of psychological impulses.

P. S. : Sorry for the quality of the pictures, I’m not a professional photographer.

Thanks for reading, Dóra

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