Emily Hobson
BCom International Business
Semester Exchange in the Second Semester, 2022 at UNC Greensboro
Pre-departure:
…where to begin? The first thing (which I’m sure you will hear 100 times) is to start with all the admin early. The admin work that goes into travelling is definitely the least fun part of the whole experience, but it will all just be a tiny blip in your memory once you are actually overseas. The UNCG international office was very efficient and after I heard that I had been accepted, they were quite quick to mail me the documents I needed to apply for a US visa. I applied online immediately but I experienced huge issues with the US Consulate in Cape Town.
Basically, once you apply online you are usually able to make an appointment for your in-person interview, however there was a ‘technical issue’ with my account which was left unresolved for months… After calling and emailing the consulate countless times, the issue was still not resolved. By the time June came around I was freaking out, but I kept calling the embassy multiple times a day until they paid attention to me. I finally had my visa appointment, received my visa a couple days later and booked my flight to the US. Four days later I was on my way!
In the months leading up to your departure, I would suggest that you keep a to-do list on your phone to constantly update and tick off. My to-do list included things such as getting travel insurance, getting health insurance, ensuring my bank card would work overseas, buying dollars, making a budget, getting the vaccines I needed, booking flights, submitting the necessary documents to Stellenbosch and UNCG etc. Keeping a list of everything helped me feel much more in control and just ticking one thing off your list each day is very satisfying!
UNCG was also very helpful and responsive to any questions I had. Do check your emails regularly and to keep in touch with the international office and ask as many questions as you need to – they are used to dealing with students from all around the world so never feel like you are asking something silly. As the June exams approach, you will be trying to contain your excitement for this new adventure while studying for exams so the last thing you want to be dealing with is travel admin. I remember standing outside of the Study Centre on the phone to the US Embassy in tears while trying to study for an exam… it is not fun. Some things are out of your control but try your best to do everything you can before exams come around so that you do not have that extra pressure on yourself.
Experience at the host university:
UNCG is situated in a small town (Greensboro) in North Carolina and is not the most interesting and definitely not as beautiful as Stellenbosch. It is like Stellenbosch in the sense that the university campus is a big part of the town and there is a similar number of students. It is a very diverse university, with many people from different states, countries and financial backgrounds. It is not a big football school; in fact, it does not have American Football at all so you will not get that typical American movie college experience. I did love how central Greensboro was on the East Coast. This made it relatively easy to travel around the country compared to if you were far in the North or South, for example. I was very keen to travel as much as possible during my time in the US so I deliberately chose classes that were in the middle of the week so I would have long weekends to travel. I was very lucky and ended up only having lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Most of my lectures were in the Bryan School of Business and when selecting my modules, I tried to choose ones which were unique and which I could not take at Stellenbosch. For example, I took a module called ‘Global Health Entrepreneurship’ which was incredibly interesting and much more niche than the Entrepreneurship modules I’m used to. This is the one opportunity you will have to take weird and wonderful modules; I encourage you to step out of your comfort zone. I found the workload to be much less than I was used to. There was a lot of little homework assignments I needed to do, but they were all relatively easy and did not take up a lot of my time. If you go to class, complete all the assignments, and study an average amount, you can definitely get an A. Most of my lectures were much smaller in size compared to Stellenbosch and I found that the lecturers engaged with you on a much more personal level than I was used to – they spoke about their families, their past jobs and their daily lives. The lectures were also much more participative and casual than I had experienced at Stellenbosch.
I would highly recommend that you stay at Tower Village if you go to UNCG. This is a residence made up of many apartment style dorms where most of the international students stay, as well as some American students. I absolutely loved staying there –I had my own room, and I shared a large bathroom, lounge and kitchen with four other girls. There were 60 other international students living there and we all became one big family. We often went out as a group of international students to explore downtown Greensboro, shop, and go to the few bars and clubs. Top tip: if you find yourself in Greensboro, go to the Corner Bar on a Tuesday night. You can get a beer for $1, and this is the student night, so it is a great place to meet new people!
I had an unlimited meal plan which allowed me to eat at the cafeteria (the ‘Caf’ as the students call it) as many times a day as I wanted. At first, I was very worried about the variety and quality of the food at the Caf, especially as I am a vegetarian. Much to my surprise, they had everything: pizza, pasta, burgers, a salad bar, an Asian section and a vegan/vegetarian section. After a while, the food can become a bit repetitive and it was oilier and saltier than I was used to, but I was still very grateful to not have to shop, cook and clean for myself. I would highly recommend getting a meal plan as this is also a time to sit down and chat with all the other students daily.
As much as your semester abroad is about being exposed to academics at a different level, it is also about immersing yourself in the culture, meeting new people and travelling to new places. I made many new friends, mostly with the other international students. I must admit, I struggled to connect with the American students. I found them to be very friendly at first but not very engaging and interested in you on a deeper level. This is a stereotype, but Americans are known to be individualistic and a bit self-absorbed, and from my experience this is true. My one goal during the semester was to travel as much as I could and I was fortunate enough to travel to many new places such as Charlotte, Charleston, Chapel Hill, the Smoky Mountains, Nashville, Boston, Chicago, New York City and a few places in Florida. Flights within the US can be very expensive, especially if you do not book them far in advance. A great option is to hire a car with a group of people and to make a road trip out of it. One thing I would therefore highly encourage you to do before leaving South Africa is to get an international driving license (it is just a piece of paper, there’s no test or anything), and to get a credit card. The rental car companies will not let you be the driver of the hired car unless you are the one that is paying for it, and to pay for it you must have a credit card.
Return to Stellenbosch:
I returned to South Africa after a trip of a lifetime just in time for Christmas. It was such a bittersweet moment as I was incredibly sad to say goodbye to all the wonderful people, I had met but I was also so happy to see my friends and family and be back in sunny Cape Town. The last few weeks in the US were quite an emotional rollercoaster – realizing that the whole experience was over already, that you would never have that time back and would probably never be with your whole group of friends again. I was very happy to be home and it helped that I arrived back at a time when there were things to look forward to such as Christmas, New Years and a whole summer holiday still left to enjoy.
It was so fun to be able to tell my friends and family about my experience and show them my pictures, but it is also hard to recount such a unique experience to people who did not live it themselves. The hype of arriving home does fade quite quickly and for me it kind of felt like I had never left. It is easy to come home and feel very critical of all South Africa’s problems which you may not have seen or experienced abroad, such as poverty, loadshedding, crime… the list goes on. As much as it breaks my heart that our beautiful country experiences these things on such a severe level, there is also so much that South Africa does have that other countries do not. I was more hyper-aware of all the problems we experience as a country on my return, but I was also incredibly grateful for the beautiful country we live in, for the South African humor and slang us locals use and all the eccentricities of our diverse country.
Travelling widens your perspective on many things. One thing that stood out for me from conversations with my European friends was how the opportunities for internships, scholarships and jobs in Europe far exceed what we have in South Africa. I am now very interested in doing my Masters in Europe and possibly working there in the next couple of years. I also realized from talking to other international students that I really need to up my game in terms of internships and experience before I enter the working world. I am so grateful that I was able to have such interesting and eye-opening conversations with such a wide variety of people because I now have a much better understanding of how some systems and processes work outside of South Africa. I think it is very easy for us to become consumed in the bubble of South Africa so this study abroad experience is invaluable.
