Erasmus in Jaen, Spain. Summer semester 2020

First i want to start by saying; when i was about to go to Jaen i was trying to google it as much as possible before comming, and the truth is i couldn't find a lot of experiences on the internet, especially not the recent ones, that's my main reason why am i writting this post.

About Jaen:

Jaen is for most people small city, and when u compare it to some bigger and major cityes in Europe, it is quite small, but im comming from a true meaning of "small city", so for me Jaen was actually not that small at all. What i liked about the city is that i can go walking everywhere i want to go, but still if i want to go from the one side of the city to another, it takes quite bit of a time and effort. There's a lot of bars, restoraunts, shops etc. Just outside of the city is even a big shopping center. I strongly recommend visiting the Castle that overlooks the city, from there you can have view on the whole city and it's a quite nice place if you enjoy nature/landscapes., since path to it leads mostly through the woods.

PEOPLE IN JAEN BARELY SPEAK ENGLISH, SO TRY TO LEARN AS MUCH SPANISH AS YOU CAN EVEN BEFORE YOU COME TO JAEN.

So is Jaen an interesting city? Straight up answer would be; not really, but it's up to you to make it interesting for yourself, people you meet, places you decide to go etc. For me, this experience was more about the people than the place itself, but Jaen also grew up on me, and i really started loving it very fast.

About the University:

Im from IT sector, so if you're too and you plan to take subjects from that profession, then in my opinion it's pretty hard to pass those subjects. Tests carry only 20% of final mark, but the "real deal" is the project that u have to work on while you're attending that subject. So professors ask you to develop mobile app, web app, make a program etc, all of that with almost no in person class attendence due to lack class support in English. Mostly you just get materials on learning platform, which i didn't find super usefull so you're left on your own, trying to google your way around.

Luckly for me, i was able to take 3 spanish courses instead which were easy to pass, they were fun to attend, and each gave me 6 ECTS points, So is it hard? Depends on how much time are you willing to put into it i guess, but because most of us come on exchange for the experience, attending some "serious" subjects will drain a lot of your time, and energy.

Other than that, you will get used to waiting a long time in international office on initial arrival because there is a lot of students on exchange, and there's only 2-3 people working there to help you, so be patient, you won't go a lot of times there beside first month anyways.

Campus itself has anything and everything one student might need. Library, internet zones, coffe bars, lunch areas, sport centers, and it's a nice place to just sit and chill around too. Campus is really nice i really liked it.

APPLY FOR BUDDY PROGRAM

I strongly recommend that you apply for a UJA buddy program before you come to Jaen. Buddy program is basicly: university of Jaen sends one of their home students to help you around everything you need about university, accommodation, how to travel to Jaen etc. Program itself is like a dice roll, you might get someone who doesn't care too much, and maybe won't even take time to meet you, like it happened to one of my roomates. Or you might have a really positive experience like me, where my buddy really helped me about everything and anything, and we stayed in contact even after i left Jaen. I can't even say how much i found my buddy helpful especially because i had 0 spanish knowladge when i just came to Spain. So apply for buddy program, it's free, and after few months u get to review your buddy, if you review them well, they get paid for the help he/she provided you, if you rate them bad, they get little or nothing, so it's also in their best interest to help you.

Expenses:

EXPENSES ARE VERY PERSONAL OPINIONS SINCE HOW MUCH MONEY YOU GET FROM ERASMUS DEPENDS WHERE ARE YOU COMMING FROM

Jaen is i believe one of the cheapest cityes when it comes to basicly anything. Money i got from the university/Erasmus was more than enough for me for the whole semester, and by that i mean; i could pay all the basic needs (food, rent, bills) and i still had money for traveling, going out etc... As long as you manage your money and look for cheap deals, money shouldn't be a problem. I need to say that i was getting around 850 euros per month for the life there, which is actually a lot when i compare it to some other students which were comming from other countryes and getting 600/500 or even 400 euros per month...

In conclusion; i really liked Jaen, i liked my erasmus experience there, and i liked almost everything about my life there, so much that i'm already exploring my possibilites to come back on another exhange next year. In this post i maybe focused a bit more on the negative side of things, but i think we're all more concerned about what might go wrong, rather than all "great" stuff that will happen, but believe me, way more great stuff will happen compared to all of those "problems" above. I wasn't really able to experience Jaen and Spain like i wanted to due to COVID-19, but it was still non the less great experience!

If you have any questions or you would like to know more, dont hesitate to hit me up on twitter: @Zyxmaan