A Blog about Education Abroad

Author: elanaryklief

  • Jesse Vernon Wheeler at University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jesse Vernon Wheeler at University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Pre departure:

    Initially, I wasn’t convinced I would be going to Amsterdam, the Netherlands to study towards an LLM (Master’s in International Trade Law). Those dreams were realized after being asked, “What would you be doing in the Netherlands?” at the Passport control at Schiphol International Airport.

    I applied for the Stellenbosch Global Exchange Program. Those applications you apply for, knowing that the chances of it succeeding are limited. I was called for an interview and got accepted. The panel asked me where I would like to study. I replied, “In the Netherlands, somewhere close to Amsterdam”, after all, this is where the modern stock market was invented, it is also one part of the legal system we use (Roman-Dutch and English law). I was in, now I needed to prepare.

    The visa application process was uncomplicated.

    I applied for a South African passport which Home Affairs, in Wynberg, processed in 21 working days. I filled out the passport application form DHA-73; attach two photos and paid the application fee. Once the passport is received, continue as below.

    The Visa application is done at the Dutch Consulate General in Strand Street, Cape Town. For the embassy, an online appointment is necessary. Do not show up at the embassy and expect to be helped.

    After getting an appointment, I went to the Consulate. I handed over my passport document to be shipped to the Netherlands. This was approved and brought back, Schengen visa installed, the process took a further 15 working days. What this means is that if you apply for your passport on the first of June 2020 at the very minimum you would only get your passport, visa included, on the 20th July 2020 (Roughly 36 working or 50 calendar days later).

    During this time, you have to purchase flight tickets, spend time with loved ones, deal with normal life, worry about passports and visas, and focus on school. I spent a lot of time crying and enjoyed one or two mental breakdowns.

    I made expensive mistakes regarding flight tickets. I bought a ticket, Cape Town International Airport (CPT), through Heathrow International Airport, in London, to Schiphol International Airport, in the Netherlands. This ticket was cancelled because I would need a transit Visa to transit through the United Kingdom. The flight center didn’t mention that all I needed to do was apply for this visa and instead cancelled the ticket. Another was booked from CPT to Schiphol through Dubai International Airport. Another practical route would be from CPT through Ethiopia to the Netherlands.

    Instead of using the travel agency, flight tickets can be purchased on www.Skyscanner.com. If you know when you will be flying, booking tickets in advance is cheaper. I recommend this sight as they compare all available flights and let you chose the best fit. Do some reading before the time and make sure that everything regarding your ticket is valid.

    There is a lot of reading involved when choosing accommodation or medical insurance (which is mandatory); You will get tired of reading, you will have to read the same document 50 times, but you have to read them.

    I was lucky because the cheapest accommodation was also the nearest to the University of Amsterdam. I chose this and paid one month deposit for the room. There’s a housing shortage in Amsterdam; mostly due to high numbers of tourists and because of this you need to act fast! Even the locals do not have access to housing near campus.

    Experience at Home University:

    There is a significant difference between the academic program at the University of Amsterdam and Stellenbosch University. This is evident in the work load and the exam.

    At Stellenbosch University the Masters courses are held only at night. There is a 15 week course block where a student takes two courses. The exams are spread out over usually a month block.

    At the University of Amsterdam, the Masters courses are held throughout the day and night. There is only a 7 week course block where students take a recommended two or three courses. The exams are all scheduled in the same week.

    Because the same number of courses have to be completed in half the time and the exams, (Typically 4 hours papers at each university), are not spread out over a longer time, the workload feels more intense. This is highly stressful and the limited time forces you to work twice as hard, pushing you past what you think you are capable of. Mental breakdowns in this time, for me and friends, were all over the place.

    There are a few subtle differences. There was no language barrier, being a student at Stellenbosch University and having the ability to speak Afrikaans and then being in Amsterdam and having the ability to understand some Dutch conversations helped a lot. What also helped a lot was my ability to speak English. Most of my friends were not native English speakers and needed to adapt to my accent.

    Both Amsterdam and Stellenbosch are student towns; there is always the perfect environment to talk about interesting topics. You are surrounded by Art, literature, politics, language, science, business and psychology students. It provides the perfect ground for learning as everyone that you interact with has a layer of education that can influence your learning style and way of thinking.

    Students at Stellenbosch University do not realize how extremely lucky they are. At Stellenbosch University there is so much space to study. You can sit in the library, multiple cafes, in the Masters space in the library, or even in the Law Masters lab! At the University of Amsterdam, if you do not wake up at 6 am and run to the library, there will be no space…In The Entire City, To Study.

    The academic program is extremely current; European Contract law had an element of block chain technology, smart contracts, and crypto currency. What helped a lot was that I could read about my studies in everyday news articles and blog posts. The relevance and focus on technology really opened my eyes to the future. I could only compare this with the course I took in Sustainable Development law at Stellenbosch which was also modern.

    Return to Stellenbosch:

    Returning to South Africa was extremely difficult for me. After finishing at the university I decided to extend my flight tickets to the last day of my Dutch residence permit. I had not seen enough and now I would have the opportunity to learn about life in Europe, out of school. Oh my, the mental breakdowns.

    I had two weeks left before exams, before having to leave my student residence, without a job as my temporary working permit (TVV) expired. How was I supposed to do this…while having multiple mental breakdowns?

    I quickly realized that the Netherlands had a housing crisis and shortage of available accommodation due to limited space and an enormous number of tourists. This made finding an apartment for Anna and me almost impossible. I stayed in 3 hostels for a week each before finding accommodation.

    Thanks to being able to travel through the European Union with our student documents, we took a bus, through the Netherlands, through the entire country of Germany, and ended in Warsaw, Poland.

    Moved into the apartment and I found a job without speaking a word of Polish, in a town where everyone either spoke, Polish, Ukrainian or Russian. Insane! I worked at a bar and spent a total of 2 months in Warsaw.

    As COVID – 19 hit, the boarders of Poland closed. I applied for a government Repatriation flight after four of my airplane tickets were cancelled. I contacted multiple agencies: The South African consulates in the Netherlands, Berlin, Warsaw and the DIRCO head office in Pretoria, a charter plane was booked from Frankfurt International airport in Germany to O.R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.

    It was COVID 19, all land boarders were closed, there were no trains, no busses, no airplanes and crossing the border into Germany meant 14 days quarantine. This felt impossible and once again, Mental breakdown.  I got into contact with a South African who was in the same predicament. She hired a car; I drove 16 hours from Warsaw to Frankfurt, on the wrong side of the road, with a left hand drive car. At the Polish border the two officers did not speak a word of English, standing with riffles and examining our documents before calling a second higher ranked army vehicle to drive us over the German border.

    After landing at O.R Tambo International Airport, we were transported to Boxburg for mandatory government quarantine. We were provided with food and accommodation; I stayed for 9 days at the hotel before I hitchhiked with three Portuguese speaking Angolan gentlemen who were also in quarantine.

    South Africa needs to change in many ways but some things should stay the same. South Africa has an excellent transformative constitution; most European countries do not enjoy the same rights we do. But we have a giant problem, an under educated population, mass femicide and a lack of infrastructure. We need to learn how to use the internet and we need to manufacture cheap computers. This will expand our overall knowledge pool and we would be able to better the lives of the people we interact with daily.

    My personal goal is to focus on lifelong education, get access to basic materials and to help people that need it the most.

    This has been the most unique experience of my life thus far. I studied in the Netherlands, visited Belgium, drove through Germany and lived in Poland. I know this, and at the very end during the COVID 19 crisis, would be engraved in my memory forever. I will definitely travel in Africa and abroad again. Each place is so unique and cannot be given justice on paper.

    Thank you, Stellenbosch University, for giving me this opportunity to go abroad and opening my eyes to the world.

  • Jacqueline Roux at Maastricht University, The Netherlands

    Jacqueline Roux at Maastricht University, The Netherlands

    Pre-departure:

    The administrative tasks involved in the application process at first seemed overwhelming, along with the high university workload, new and foreign courses at the start of the academic semester, and future career and degree prospects. The preparations involved only an initial swamp of administration, but once my exchange was approved, correspondence with the exchange university (Maastricht University) was a breeze. Whenever I had a question (i.e. regarding approval to register for an additional course), I received a response from the university on the same day and often even within the hour. For instance, I was nominated to receive a scholarship from UM, but overlooked the fact that this only meant that I was allowed to apply for the scholarship and not that I automatically received it. I realised this a good few months after the application deadline. I contacted the university by email immediately and asked if it was too late to apply and was pleasantly informed that there was still a scholarship available for me. It just goes to show that you should never count yourself out and if you do not ask, you cannot receive.

    The university has a visa office that arranges your student visa for you. This also involved a decent amount of administration and numerous emails from the university’s visa office to amend the documents I had supplied. The email communication was timely and well managed on the part of the university, although it is very important to regularly check your inbox and stay on top of deadlines. Submitting the application as soon as possible is also the preferred way to go in case the visa office asks for the documents to be amended (something I was requested to do on two occasions).

    The only thing that did not go well regarding the application process was getting email responses from lecturers regarding the approval of courses. In this case, I would highly recommend that future exchange students approach their lecturers well in advance to sign off on their learning agreements in person, rather than via email. This makes it both easier for the lecturer and also ensures that your learning agreement is signed in time.

    The only other pre-departure stressor that I faced, and a prominent one at that, was finding accommodation. In my case, exchange students have to arrange their own accommodation. For UM, there is also the UM Guesthouse that is solely for short stay students, but by the time I had started looking for accommodation here, there was only one spot left in a shared room with no room divider. By no means was this an ideal situation for 6 months. Accommodation is notoriously difficult to find in Maastricht and half-year contracts even more so, so one has to arrange this months in advance. It took at least a month of searching, comparing, messaging, waiting, and hoping. I eventually posted a Facebook ‘advertisement’ of myself on a room-search page and was relieved to be contacted a few days later by a girl with a room for me to sublet. As a large majority of UM students leave for a semester exchange or an internship, I think finding accommodation from students who sublet is the best option.

    During the Exchange:

    The academic experience at UM is different in one very substantial way: the Problem-Based-Learning system. Students learn in small tutorial groups and participate actively by following the PBL-structure. One student is selected per tutorial to act as a discussion leader, guiding the session, where a staff member, PhD student, or even the course coordinator facilitates the session so as to keep students on track with the necessary learning material.

    The lectures that were presented were also less frequent and longer in duration than those offered at SU. Many of the courses had a new presenter each time, as the different lecture topics were presented by top specialists in that particular field of research. This I found to be particularly exciting, as we were taught by specialists within niche fields (i.e. psychosis, insomnia, cognitive enhancement, and the neurobiology of depression).

    The academic courses that I followed were also significantly different to that offered at Stellenbosch. Stellenbosch’s Psychology Department is a whole different world compared to Maastricht University’s Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (as the faculty name would imply). UM focuses on Clinical and Biological Psychology, as well as full-on neuroscience courses. Psychology students at UM take statistics from their very first bachelor’s year. Students here with a BSc in Psychology, whereas in South Africa, the only route becoming a psychologist is to major in psychology in a BSc or BA degree which comprises a multitude of courses that may be entirely unrelated to the specialisation of psychology. This environment moulds an entirely different psychology student to that of South African Universities. The faculty also has its own building that is connected to the Life Sciences building and a hospital where students conduct research. If you are into neuroscience and neuropsychology, you may also be just as excited as what I was when I saw a giant statue of a neuron on the building.

    My personal experience of university and career opportunities has also shifted in a drastic way. I was exposed to far more choice in what I studied. I also felt a sense of acknowledgement, encouragement, and opportunity for the career path I had chosen in my first year of studies. In the three and half years of my studies at Stellenbosch, myself and many other students were highly stressed because of continually being told of the small chance to be selected for the honours and master’s programmes. This fact which was drilled into us from the very start and led to self-doubt and a feeling of continuous competition among students. Coming to Maastricht University, my fellow classmates and I were all addressed by top academics as “the future psychologists of the world.” I felt inspired, motivated, and challenged in ways that I had been craving for a very long time.

    There is almost an infinite stream of posters advertising research participation to students. This is an exciting and fun way to be part of a study and see how behavioural research and neuroimaging equipment works. It also a sure way to make some decent extra cash on the side. I also found the staff to be warm and accommodating and I effortlessly landed a position as a research assistant by simply asking to be involved.

    Returning to SA:

    Although South Africa is a highly diverse country, my experience abroad has definitely made me more appreciative of diversity. UM is termed the European University of the Netherlands and over 50% of students and 40% of staff are from abroad. People are eager to learn about each other’s different cultures and often gather to have ‘international dinners’ where each student makes a dish from their home country.

    Coming home has once again made me realise how lucky we are to live in a country with great mountains, beautiful beaches, wide open country sides, and long summers. The Netherlands is highly built up, very densely populated, and the winters can get very cold, dark, and wet. The short days in winter was probably the hardest aspect for me, although it is definitely a trade-off between this and first-world transport and a constant feeling of safety and equality. Whilst abroad, I was safe walking a long distance home from a friend at 11pm at night – a common activity for all students. This is something unheard of in our country and an aspect I sorely miss.

    The trip has also made me realise that psychology research at South African universities has shifted to focus on issues related to HIV, poverty, gender-violence, group therapy, and race, since these are some of the most pressing issues in our country. Unfortunately, many students like myself who are interested in Clinical and Biological Psychology reach a dead-end and are then faced with the problem of not being able to pursue our academic interests in our own country, but must instead pursue these interests abroad with the option to bring this knowledge back home.

    My trip abroad has also opened my eyes on the great desirability for South African students at European universities. In fact, I have been told numerous times that being from  outside the European Union, and particularly from Africa, counts in your favour for acceptance into the more competitive master’s programmes. Scholarships are also plentiful for non-EU students and there are also a handful set aside for South African students specifically.

    The experience has most certainly solidified and stoked a passion of mine. It has also reassured what I have been wanting to do for the last four years – that is, to pursue a master’s degree in neuropsychology at UM. I most certainly plan to return to Maastricht in a few months for this 2-year degree programme. I have also learnt about outstanding paid PhD positions that are offered in the Netherlands, where you obtain your PhD whilst you act as an employee of the university. Realising that such opportunities exist have made me hopeful, excited, and ambitious for my future career and only more eager to expand my capabilities.

  • Heinrich Geldenhuys at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China

    Heinrich Geldenhuys at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China

    Graduate Academic Forum of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China

    The Global Alliance of Universities on Climate (GAUC) was established at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.  The aim is to create international collaboration regarding support measures for the United Nations climate change and Sustainable Development Goals.  This alliance consists of twelve leading universities internationally, of which Stellenbosch University was included as the African continent’s representative in climate change research. The need was identified for the active exchange of information at a student level regarding climate change.  Hereby the very first Graduate Academic Forum of the GAUC was set in motion by inviting student representatives from each member university.

    Pre-departure

    The following detail describes the preparations I had to undertake for the trip and will provide a good perspective and guideline of what to expect to the students that follow the years to come.  The first priority is to start applying for a visa and collecting all the documentation needed.  Fill in, print and sign the online application form to take with you.  Apply for a type F visa.  Visa photos should be sized 33mm x 48mm (measure them since the photo shops make mistakes sometimes), and make sure that you comply to the Chinese guides of how the photo should look.  Also bring along your invitation letter from the organisers or Tsinghua University.  We were fortunate that the organisers sent us invitation letters signed by the Chinese Minister of Education.  Copies of passport pages, proof of registration, flight and accommodation reservations, and a leave letter written by your supervisor should also be taken with you.

    The Chinese consulate is situated on the 20th floor, 1 Thibault Square, Long Street, Cape Town.  They open 9am and close 12:30pm, 9am is the recommended time and the traffic isn’t great there so be sure to check on Google Maps for the predicted TOA from where you are driving (from Stellenbosch it should take you about an hour to two hours). You can use the Thibault Square Parking (it is under a neighbouring building) to park, take cash to pay parking.

    When packing one’s bag it is important to consider the weather to be expected.  Beijing is very cold in November so pack gloves, a scarf and long johns or thermal underwear for under your pants.  Puffer jackets are the preferred type of clothing to insulate against the cold in Beijing and are widely worn by the locals.  Layering one’s clothing also works well.

    It is a good idea to have a copy of all your documentation with you during your flights, especially your letter of invitation confirming your purpose of visit.  It does happen that customs experience problems with your passport and ask for documentation.  Buy a Chinese SIM card at the airport in China to make your journey easier.  Remember with some carriers to cancel your SIM card before leaving the country, as this could apparently have implications such as blacklisting. We used Unicom and they confirmed that the SIM card we bought does not require cancellation as it will terminate by itself after a certain time.

    The organisers relied on WeChat (Whatsapp does not work in China) to communicate the arrangements to all the attendees in a group chat.  Install WeChat early on as it is tricky to get it up and running, you need to be invited by another Chinese/user on the app and it is not unusual to get blocked.

    During the Forum

    The organisers provided us with accommodation at one of their guesthouses/hotels in shared rooms of 2 -3 persons. We received meal cards to use on campus and breakfast was included at the hotel.  It is easy to get lost on campus, especially if you rely on google maps.  The best is to stay in groups, use the campus map or install the Chinese map apps, Didi (their Uber app), and Alipay (like Paypal).

    I was selected to do a presentation on my work, it entails how an existing city’s infrastructure can be transitioned to become a smart sustainable city.  The organisers provided us with themed templates for posters and presentations beforehand. The forum started with a welcoming reception in the evening where the GAUC welcomed us with special entertainment ranging from singing, Chinese opera and a magician.  The first day we attended the opening ceremony that entailed the opening address and keynote speeches by selected chairs of the GAUC Leadership, ending with a panel discussion.  Most of the speeches were in Chinese/Mandarin, but a translation service was in place so that everyone were able to participate.  The poster sessions and presentations followed during the main part of the forum, including the World Youth Roundtable, where the Youth Declaration on Climate Change was established, to discuss and promote the role and involvement of students and the youth in tackling climate change.

    After the Forum

    Sightseeing is a must in Beijing.  Beijing is also very safe due to their thorough camera surveillance, but make sure that you arrive home before 10pm or 11pm, as taxis become scarce and the rail metro closes.  After 5pm temperatures drop drastically.  Shops are open until 9pm, but close earlier on Saturdays.  Make use of TripAdvisor recommendations for visiting the tourist sights.  One of the sites are very near to Tsinghua University and ideal to go see after the forum.  It is the Summer Palace which showcases some of China’s most amazing heritage and scenery.

    Tsinghua University is the number one university in China and they have a beautiful campus, it reminded me a lot of Stellenbosch University and how proud I am to be associated with such an established university.  It was really an honour to represent Stellenbosch University amongst students from other leading universities of the world, to exchange insights and learn from each other.

    During the forum delegates had a choice to help write an email to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, about the challenges and reality of climate change and how this matter is of great importance to a country but especially the youth.  After returning to South Africa the feedback from president Jinping was shared with the students who participated and the students had the opportunity to again comment and provide their insights in another response.