Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download

SAE Magazine 12-2

You will then start to miss your friends and family, askyourselfwhysomanythingsaredifferentthanin your home country and might even become angry or upset about some practices, cultural aspects or you simply miss your local home cooking and speciali- ties. Maybe your girlfriend or boyfriend breaks up with you, the subjects you are studying are not ex- actly what you expected or money is running short, so the great trip that you planned seems to be not happening. Most students abroad will probably go through this phase with the same or similar prob- lems. Living thousands of kilometres away, hours before or behind your family at home just seems to make it harder and might even push you to the point where you just feel like going home. Now, the good thing is, this will change again and you will start to appreciate the little things around you. You get to know new people again. You will attend some great parties. Maybe you will com- plete a good project for university or finally find a job although you never expected to do so. You will celebrate Christmas in shorts on the beach.You will see kangaroos, alligators, emus, koalas and cam- els running through the Outback. You will climb a glacier in New Zealand and experience things you never knew existed. Maybe you will learn something completely new, meet the love of your life, learn to surf, become a diving teacher or watch whales jumping out of the water at the most Eastern point of the Austra- lian mainland while seeing dolphins swimming the other way. I could go on for hours and advertise the advan- tages of studying in a foreign country. For me the essence is that it changes you and opens your eyes. You will learn about other people and countries and more importantly you will learn about your- self and your home country. You will learn how to organise yourself and manage being independent, because friends and family are not there to assist you. All this will strengthen your personality and it might also make you more relaxed, since you have proved to yourself that you are able to face this challenge. With regards to your studies you will learn new ap- proaches and get to know different lecturers, pro- fessors and students from different countries. You will be able to study subjects that you were nev- er able to study in your home country or at your home university. You will take tests, create proj- ects or even write your thesis in another language, which will improve your chances of working in an international environment. You will enhance your capabilities to express yourself, even in your native language. Maybe you will create contacts with amazing professors or have the opportunity to be engaged in interesting research. Basically it is what you make of it. I can only recommend it to everybody. ➤ Ansons Bay, Tasmania 138 Events & Activities Index

Pages