University - Politecnico di Milano

Hi guys,

This time I will share my experience about university and the study environment in Italy. As you may understand from the title of this post, I was studying in Politecnico di Milano. My exchange programme was connected with interior design, however, in my home university - VIA Design - I was studying Retail Design and Management.

At first, I was very excited to learn some new things about interior design and the school itself. Unfortunately, the first day of university was a complete disappointment. In administration, where I had to choose the subjects what I would like to learn during my exchange, were all in Italian. Basically it was impossible to study in English. However, before I left for exchange they told me that my studies will be in English and all the books and presentations as well but it wasn't true. I was very surprised but I decided to try and study in Italian, even though I didn't understand anything.

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The teachers were quite friendly but only at the beginning. Later on, they were too lazy to translate everything and they asked for other students help. Unfortunately, they didn't speak that well in English so it was hard to follow up the lesson's plan. Besides, Italians don't really like exchange students and they were afraid to communicate in English. I was lucky to have other Erasmus people in my class with whom I could spend my time together.

My suggestion to you, is to find out everything about the school where you want to take your exchange semester before you leave, in order to not have the same problem as I had.

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