My first semester in the Netherlands
I have just finished my exams, projects and assignments for my first semester at Aeres University. The exams here are completely different than at Hungarian universities. Students are not required to learn long books word-by-word, that they will forget in a couple of weeks anyway. The exams here are more practical, the most important thing is that the student understand the theories and know how to use them in real-life situations, which is what exams focus on as well.
During the last couple of months I had the chance to work on individual and group projects, solve case studies and in the next semester I will be doing my internship at a Dutch company. I got to know Cefetra B.V. at a career expo back in November, where I met some employees from the company and expressed my interest in the company to them. After sending in my CV and motivation letter I was invited for a Skype interview and then a personal interview and was offered the position in December.
I had many positive experiences, but also some challenging ones. For me the most difficult tasks were the group projects, where I had to rely on others and adapt to them. The cultural and language differences were visible, but the biggest difference was the varying expectations. Working in a group where one member just wants to pass, one wants a very high mark and others just don’t care is very challenging. In spite of all this, I feel like we all learned how to work together with different people and different cultures.
I finished the semester with good grades that I am very proud of. I would like to thank the Foundation, because I couldn’t have done it alone, without the language lessons and the scholarship.
In my free time here, I tried to visit as much of the country as I could, you can see these on the pictures.
I will start my internship in Rotterdam in the middle of February, which I am very excited about. I will, of course, write about that experience as well, to show my fellow students that it is worth it!
Petra Kollárovics Kaposvár 2.
