Semester study abroad program?

What is it like for an IITian to study a semester abroad in Europe on an exchange program?

• Please do add your personal experiences and how it affects your study program at IIT.

• Answer:

  Thanks for the A2A. I don't know if this is applicable to just "IITians" as such but I will go ahead and answer as IIT Guwahati became a partnering institution during my time with Erasmus Mundus Heritage exchange program and I was fortunate to receive the Erasmus Mundus scholarship for an exchange semester in France at Ecole centrale de Nantes (ECN) for 6 months.  I will divide the answer into academics and everything else :P Academically, although I was in a master level course as an exchange student, I wanted to be back in IITG as the undergrad courses in my college are more intensive and challenging. Of course however the academic relaxation at ECN actually made me attend classes and do the course in a pain free way. It can also be possible that the courses that were made available to the exchange students were listed keeping in mind that we are undergrads, may be, however I felt it was easier academically to ace the courses in ECN. (Surprisingly got straight As in all courses. You will realize the surprise after you know my travel agenda :P) The classes were longer here (2 hours straight) but the content taught was the same as a 1 hour class in IITG which meant either you got more time to grasp the complicated stuff or simply get bored. Anyway, this is highly subjective as some students do like slow classes. I am more of a fast paced learner. Regarding everything else, well, as an undergrad I can say that I had a bucket-list which was always considered to be hypothetical by me as it was simply not possible  to achieve everything on that list being in Guwahati :P However, after going to Europe just within 6 months I not only completed my bucket-list but actually had to reinvent it to go ahead and scratch that :P For me it has always been amazing to go to a new place, meet new people and live in a different culture. I traveled to 12 countries and 48 cities and made sure I got to do the local stuff there apart from the tourist stuff. I was offered dinner by random German couple the day I arrived in Germany. I got robbed of 300 euros in Berlin. Went to the police station and got the money back after a while. Met some very crazy people in the numerous train journeys with whom I interact even now thanks to Facebook. Finally got to be part of a flash mob at ECN with fellow Indians and made some very good friends there. Met an old couple in UK with whom I went trekking and they were healthier than me. Which is why I have started taking health issues more seriously. Visiting certain UNESCO Heritage sites and doing the touristy stuff in every city was exhilarating. I knew I was going to graduate school and so I learnt cooking almost everything in those 6 months. Staying with three girls of different nationalities ( Spanish, French and Russian) taught me a lot of things. Troubling the international students office to the point that they recognized me soon enough and also spoke to Prof. Bose, our university professor and the Heritage coordinator, about me made me feel good. Going for pub crawls, meeting Canadians and Americans and getting to know their reason to be here in this wonderful continent, speaking to Africans and their motive to be in France, meeting people from Tajikistan, Pakistan, Korea and basically the whole wide world made me realize that the world is not that bad after all and everyone is trying to figure out the enigma of life in their own way. Backpacking across Europe was the best thing that happened to me. It has made me patient, compassionate, adventurous, less stupid, careful and moreover a better human being. You can go ahead and read my blog for more details :P http://motocompostions.blogspot.in/2014/06/happenstance-foreordination-or-volition.html http://motocompostions.blogspot.in/2014/03/europe-and-everything-else-part-1.html http://motocompostions.blogspot.in/2014/02/bonjour-france.html