A Blog about Education Abroad

Category: Winter / Summer School Postings

  • Vonani at the Bayreuth International Summer School, Germany

    Vonani at the Bayreuth International Summer School, Germany

    Pre-departure:

    As soon as I found out that I was accepted for the summer school, I started preparing. I was about to write exams also so I made sure that I got everything out-of-the-way first so that I could fully focus on my exams. To go to Germany you need a Schengen tourist Visa. On this website (https://www.visa-germany.co.za/) they have provided a document with everything you will need for the visa application. If you aren’t sure of what they mean, you can always call the centre. It’s always better to contact the specific centre that you will be applying at because maybe they do things differently in each centre. I did mine in Cape Town and I only spent about 15 minutes there. It was very easy because I had all the documents and I had called them many times before my appointment to make sure that I had everything I needed for the application.

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  • Earl at the VU Amsterdam Summer School, the Netherlands

    Earl at the VU Amsterdam Summer School, the Netherlands

    Pre-departure:

    As someone who knows how to stress (I’m working on it), I can thankfully say that the pre-departure process wasn’t as frightening as I thought it would be. This is definitely because of the great work from the team at SU International and at the Vrije University Amsterdam (VU). After the acceptance, SU International had an orientation programme where we received a lot of helpful tips. Please make sure you go to that meeting. There you will learn the importance of not J-walking, which is something I had to get used to!

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  • Liezel at KU Leuven, Belgium

    Liezel at KU Leuven, Belgium

    The reason:

    Let me start of with a caveat: I’m not your typical student. I’m 35 and in my third year of studies. In my previous life as part of the workforce, having 21 days annual leave was the norm. With never-ending deadlines, taking full advantage of this was a challenge and at the end of the year I always ended up carrying over some unused leave days.

    Imagine then the complete mind-shift when I became a fulltime student again with an average of approximately 12 weeks holiday per year. The concept was daunting. What was I going to do with all this time? I’m married and my husband still has to work, so long romantic vacations were not on the cards. Plus, of course, I don’t have the luxury anymore of saving up a salary for a fun-filled getaway to somewhere exotic. I definitely also didn’t just want to sit at home reading or binge watching series. No: I wanted to use this time in a smart way, maximising my four short years of being a full-time student again. I set out to learn as much as I can and challenged myself use this time to postion myself optimally for when I put down my pen during my final exam I’’ll be writing in 2018.

    So I made a rough list of things I thought I could keep myself productive with. I must admit, the holidays flew by faster than I expected and though I managed to do many of the things on my list, international exposure was always at the back of my mind. I was looking for an opportunity at the university that could support my hunger for learning.

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