Pre-departure:
Before approaching something as big in your life as an exchange abroad, you should prepare yourself for A LOT of administration. Of course, in the end, this will all be well worth it.
Things you have to organize by yourself to go to Leiden University in the Netherlands in particular are your bursaries, accommodation, travelling arrangements and visa applications. The exchange coordinators at Leiden University are very helpful, fortunately, they tell you exactly what to do and when it should be done. It is very important to keep up to date with all the deadlines for certain payments and applications that they give you, so that you are sure you will get you visa on time. You also do have to go to the Dutch embassy, so again, be prepared to spend a lot of time organizing. Even though I felt overwhelmed by all the different applications and forms at times, it is not something that I really feel overshadowed the whole experience, so just do what you must, when you must, and everything should run smoothly.
An insightful tip might be to look for private accommodation in Leiden – even though the university have a housing agent, DUWO, the accommodation is extremely expensive and even though you have to pay a deposit of 350euro, it is not guaranteed that you will get accommodation. There are a lot of private groups, on Facebook for example, where students sublet their rooms privately; one for example is called Leiden Housing. By choosing to hire privately you save a lot of money on administration and deposit fees.
What I experienced in Leiden is that it does not help to take a lot of winter clothes from South-Africa – their winters are extremely different to ours and it is so much colder. My advice would be to take basics and budget enough to get a decent European winter jacket once you arrive there, this would ensure that you survive the icy cold winter.
On a personal level, the few days before departure are extremely scary – you start wondering why you ever decided to move so far away from home and 6 months suddenly seems like a lifetime. Just ignore these mini panic attacks, it is totally normal. Every single exchange student that I spoke to experienced the same feelings just before leaving South-Africa. Just get on the plane and go anyway, either way you will have an amazing experience and learn a lot of things not only about yourself but also about different people and cultures from all over the world. And if you are lucky enough, you will have the opportunity to travel around a bit and this makes all the administration and anxiety beforehand
Experience in Leiden:
Once you arrive in Leiden, you might feel very overwhelmed with the big change, but this is all very exciting. For exchange students, Leiden University organizes an orientation week where you are divided into different groups of around fourteen people from anywhere you can think of – I met people from Finland of all places, which is a country that I have never even given much thought to, yet they were so interesting. And people from Lithuania, which I have never heard of before – immediately your horizons are broadened. During orientation week, they keep you so busy that you literally do not have time to miss home (maybe this is their plan). Every day is filled with different activities and tours through Leiden, ensuring that you get familiar with your surroundings and also meet some people who might be studying with you. We took part in pub-crawls and –quizzes which were all extremely fun.
After the orientation week I experienced a bit of a downer; suddenly I had some time to myself and this makes you long to go home. Luckily classes started very soon and things were crazy again. In Leiden you are pretty much left to yourself to sort out your classes and credits. Coming from Stellenbosch where there is always someone available to help you when you are stuck, this was a bit frustrating. Eventually everything worked out well. I signed up for two master’s literature courses and joined in on two exchange courses (covering Dutch culture, society and literature). The master’s courses were quite hard to adjust to at first, since their way of teaching is a lot more informal than we are used to, also these lectures were 3 hours long – which was really tiring. But once I got the hang of it and realized what I needed to put in to pass my course, everything was fine.
Something to note is that Dutch people are very opinionated, so there is no way that you can just sit and listen in classes – participation is very important for them! The university library in Leiden is very beautifully designed and equipped with all the latest modern features. Their system is very different to Stellenbosch though, you cannot just take out books, you have to pre-order them. This was something that I had to get used to, so I would advise someone, especially a literature student who has to spend a lot of time in the library, to figure out the system as soon as possible.
I had the opportunity to travel a lot throughout my semester abroad – very holiday or long weekend we got. Seeing that you are in Europe it is very easy and affordable to cross the borders to other amazing places and learn about the way that Europe functions with all the different people and cultures so close to each other. I got to visit 8 European countries during my 6 months in the Netherlands and I will never change these experiences for anything in the world. My advice would be to travel as much as you can, you may not be living in Europe forever!
Returning to Stellenbosch:
My last few days in Leiden really dragged by, I could not wait to go back home. I felt really excited to know that I will be seeing my friends and family again soon. But you also feel kind of strange, knowing that your life overseas is over, and you also cannot believe how quickly the time went by! With a semester-exchange, it is as though you have to return to your life in South-Africa just as you have gotten used to everything in you “new home.”
Adjusting to life back here in Stellenbosch is quite difficult at the moment; since you feel that you are on some sort of holiday since your return. You just want to spend all your time catching up with everyone you have not seen in ages. Unfortunately I have so much that I need to get done. I am not sure how to deal with feeling-in-limbo emotion yet, but I bet I just have to get back to work as soon as possible and soon my life and my studies will return to normal again.
Nevertheless, returning was very exciting and I really love being back in South-Africa. It is true what they say, that you do not know what you have until it is gone. My experience in the Netherlands gave me insight into how lucky we all are to come from such a beautiful country, with so much nature and amazing things to see around us. And do not even get me started on the weather (I missed the sun SO much!). I also experienced that other countries have their own problems to deal with, and even though South-Africa might have more issues than European countries to deal with, we are not half as bad as everyone thinks us to be. Thus, I am grateful to be back. But I am also grateful for my experience abroad; opening my eyes to all the things we as South-Africans do not appreciate everyday anymore. I also came to the conclusion that Stellenbosch University is a really good university. I can only speak for the department of Afrikaans and Dutch, but I realized in the Netherlands how fortunate we are to have such amazing lecturers, who are also interested in getting to know you and not only in your assignments.
I am very proud of myself that I actually went through with an exchange and I am also very glad that I did it – I learnt a lot and I believe that it will help me with where I am planning to go with my life one day. Thus I would advise anyone who has the chance to live abroad for a while to do it, you will definitely not be sorry!
Thank you Stellenbosch University for this amazing opportunity!