This is part three of a three-part series on my experiences doing an exchange term in Germany. I’m just about finished with my exams and will head back to Canada soon, so I’ll do my best to put my whole experience in perspective now that it’s just about finished.
The final part of the academic experience that I haven’t discussed yet is exams. I’ve now done four exams, so I can share a little about my experience. For the most part, they’re very similar to exams in Waterloo. My exams here determine my entire grade for the course, which certainly adds some pressure once I’m sitting down and writing them. For a few exams I had to bring my own paper, which was weird but not a big deal. Because a Bachelor’s degree lasts three years in Germany, I took one Master’s level course, which had an oral exam. While I had never done anything like it in an academic context, it was a lot like a technical interview, so it didn’t feel completely foreign.
Looking back on my experiences on exchange, I think the single most valuable part was meeting people from Germany and all around the world. I learned about a lot of different cultures, and it felt good to make friends who came from places I barely knew anything about before I met them. It was also nice to have a chance to use the German I had learned in Canada every day and get better at it. If you’ve learned a foreign language in school, I think it’s very valuable to go somewhere where they speak that language and use it every day. The differences in how they teach things in a university in Canada and Germany were subtle, but I think they made me a better student. In Germany, there’s a much bigger focus on personal responsibility; I was the only one forcing myself to show up to class and keep up with the content and administrative stuff.
While I’m excited to be home in Canada, there are a few things I will certainly miss about Germany. Brunswick is just a little bit smaller than Kitchener/Waterloo, but it felt a lot more convenient to live in. There are bike paths separated from the road almost everywhere, the public transit has 5 tram lines in addition to a bunch of bus lines, and there are a lot of pedestrian zones with shops and cafes to walk around in and enjoy downtown. The ability to drink alcohol in public was also nice; it’s very pleasant to be able to grab a sausage on a bun and a beer and enjoy them outside on a nice day.
With all that said, I hope this series has been interesting and that it’s given a bit of a look into what an international exchange is like for an engineering student. It’s been a great experience for me, and I would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in experiencing life outside of Canada. Bon voyage!
Leave a Reply