Gillian attended the Summer School Marktoberdorf 2014 with the theme Dependable Software Systems Engineering. Here is her story.
Pre-departure
Before you leave there are a few things that can make your trip and travel a bit easier.
It is a good idea to do some online research about the area, places to see, and general history and culture of the city or town. Visiting a place and knowing something about the history and context makes the whole experience much more enjoyable.
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Jason attended a summer school with the theme Optimization and Decision Support Systems for Supply Chains (III) (Portalegre, Portugal). Here is his story.
After receiving notification about a summer school in Portugal I decided to take a chance and seek funding for a cultural and academic journey. After hearing of funding opportunities from friends I thought that I might have a chance at this experience. Applying for funding was easy, a simple mail and I was given all the details and information I required. The personnel at the university are friendly and helpful. Travelling from South Africa abroad has some challenges though. With the weakening rand my initial funding was only sufficient for my plane ticket and visa. Fortunately I was able to seek additional funding from my department. I offered to bring back knowledge to help my fellow students who I would have to leave behind. This would be in the form of a colloquium and a workshop. With funding for fees and accommodation I was set. All I needed to do was conquer the hurdle of travelling with the Green Mamba passport which many countries are afraid of.
Do you know where you are going to work after your studies, including job title & company? If so, then doing an exchange is not as beneficial as for someone who doesn’t have a clue yet. There are many motivations that could lead you to think about an exchange. Friends brag about how cool the parties are in Europe, how many good grades you get at some universities or even that they made friends for life or found that life partner. Those stories make one start a thought process and that’s very important. Google your future means that you should start by looking for topics of your interest online. More specifically, look who publishes in that area of expertise. Where are those people based? Do those institutes or universities offer summer schools or exchange programmes? Are there conferences where they present, which include workshops? For example, I wanted to do an innovation management summer school in London. I found it by chance while I was looking for contact information of a professor. It seemed great. Knowing that there are such workshops, I quickly found more than one seemingly suitable programme by going through Google search with keywords like “summer school”, “academy” “postgraduate workshop”, “economics” and “innovation”. Doing that research made me understand better what I really wanted to achieve. It was getting out there to rub shoulders with bright minds in my area of interest. However, there are fantastic opportunities listed on the PGIO website. So you don’t have to go through all the trouble of finding a suitable programme by yourself. (more…)