Life of an Erasmus student at the University of Murcia, Spain

My first impressions

I went to the Universidad de Murcia for one semester and it was very tough when I got there. Firstly, all the classes were in Spanish and although I spoke Spanish perfectly, I couldn't understand the Murcian accent so I didn't understand pretty much anything that the professor was saying. I got used to it after two months of classes but I had a lot of catching up to do.

I was studying Financial Mathematics back in my country and since the university wanted me to also take some financial subjects apart from just mathematics, I had to take a few subjects at the faculty of Economics. The rest of the subject I was allowed to choose at the faculty of Mathematics. Thank heavens that these faculties were close to each other so that I could quickly move from one building to another whenever it was necessary.

Another thing is that I had a lot of trouble with timetable and I couldn't make it to go along with every rule they wanted it to. It took me about a month after having started the classes to finally make it right which resulted in missing a month of one subject and having to take a month of classes of another subject that I wasn't going to take anymore. And then, the classes that you take are at different levels and sometimes they are very hard.

What I liked and disliked about the university.

I liked the fact that the campus was so huge and that it is located outside of the city but I didn't like the fact that it takes 40 minutes to get there by bus from the city center. And the fact that the buses from the campus to the city center leave every 40 minutes.

I liked the laid back attitude of the professors but I didn't like the way they explained things. Sometimes I had to go for my tutoría to their office so that they could explain everything to me again and after two hours of dealing with one thing, I always left clueless.

I liked the fact that the presence in class is not compulsory but that had a bad effect on me. Whenever something is not compulsory I tend not to do it so I skipped a lot of classes and it got me into trouble later.

I definitely didn't like the fact that I was the only Erasmus student in the class and the Spanish students basically treated me as if I wasn't there at all. No one talked to me and whenever I tried talking to people they just ended up talking with the friends, somehow completely excluding me from the conversation. At the start of the semester, when I asked for their help, they would help me. But that was just at the start. Later during the semester, they wouldn't even give me their notes to copy whenever I wasn't in class. Not to mention the fact that no one was willing to explain the mathematics stuff to me.

I didn't like the stuff that we were learning. I thought that it was not useful at all and totally unnecessary. Right now, I can't even remember all the subjects that I was taking, not to mention the content. There were two subjects that I liked and those two were the ones that I had to take at the faculty of Economics and these were: the history of economics (really cool) and financial mathematics (I liked it because I have already taken it in Poland so it was very easy for me).

I didn't like the fact that there were times during the week that I had two subjects at the same time so I had to go to one one week and then to the other the next week.

I didn't like the online platform - I think it's confusing.

So to sum up, it seems that there were more things that I didn't like about the university than the things that I actually enjoyed. And to be honest, this is exactly the case. I loved the city and I loved my life in Murcia and everything about it - except the university. It was a total catastrophe for me.

Still, it was a very good experience, although a little unpleasant at times.

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