Thursday 7th November
<aside> đŸ”– Let’s look at what studying abroad looks like! Its a very big decision to study abroad and its important to know what week to week will look like and what kind of student you will have to be.
</aside>
In the topic of studying abroad, I wanted to discuss what it’s actually like to study abroad. Compared to NTU, lectures and seminars are super different. Where I studied at the University of Valencia, the earliest lectures were at 8 am and the latest was around 9 pm! This difference is a shock to the system at first and definitely hard to balance sometimes. It takes a good routine and understanding the breaks and how to use them well in order to manage a schedule like that.
Each term is pretty much the same as in England with some differences in Spain, particularly Valencia. Get used to their own bank holidays like the March Fallas festival where you will get a few days to celebrate this festival. Punctuality is very key in this university and goes towards your overall grade, so it’s very important to not only be punctual but be present too. You can get a grade boost just from participating more in class. So it’s very important to get your name across to professors.
One of my best pieces of advice is to go to teacher’s office hours. I liked to prepare a weekly one with some of my harder subjects so that I could get a one-on-one session to explain some concepts that were hard during lectures. I also did this simply to get my name across to professors better since there are so many people in the classes, it can be hard to do so during the two hours we have. It is also good because the professors explain things differently and also give extra advice, like for example having my economics teacher give me a ‘cheat sheet’ all mapped out before any of the other students got theirs. All you have to do for an appointment is to email and they have specific time slots that you can choose from. I recommend going to 2 a week.
Lectures are very similar to those in England but in Valencia, participation is encouraged and very present with lots of the students. I was surprised to see students be so eager to answer questions and even get in front of the classroom to debate ideas. But, for good reason. It’s very useful because your professor loves when you do. And most of those students got the highest grades.
Sometimes seminars were extensions of the lectures and so it was more relaxed. Some seminars in modules like financial accounting were used to provide realistic examples to the content but were still similar to lectures as the lecturer just explained the example and how to do it alongside us following her.
In the first year at Valencia, Business Spanish was one of the modules and was my only double module I have ever received. This is very good because it can be very long hours in university there. Group projects were very important and in abundance there, so it is very key to have good networking skills, and this is also how I made lots of friends that were international without having to go and speak to them awkwardly. This was a great opportunity to learn from them since they all did slightly different modules (e.g. accountancy and commercial business etc.) so it’s very useful to ask.
Assignments are handed in very much the same and usually are around a week given for each one (individually or group) and they have their own app in which you do so.
These were what the classrooms looked like and were used for both lectures and seminars.
First day is usually getting a tour of the university and this was what my building looked like - among a few more buildings around that I had to go to. Mostly everthing was very quick to get to and there were lots of quiet rooms to study in too - with lots of space. There is no card system to get into buildings like in NTU - but I did receive an online student card that is used to identify you in exams (other than that, i didnt need it).