Pour Conclure...

So, I have returned to cold, cold England. The benefits of this involve Christmas, family, friends, and bacon. The downsides include no Mediterranean sun, no Erasmus friends, and no Lays bolognese-flavoured crisps.

The last two weeks of my Erasmus experience was entirely consumed by exams, which to me seemed quite unfair, really. Everyone always returns from abroad saying it was the best experience of their life – and I don’t understand how that can possibly involve exams. But still, there was something comforting in them. As I sat my final paper, it occurred to me that I was in the lecture theatre where our introductory lecture had been held. Four months ago, we all sat there for an hour, and then left hoping that all the other Erasmus students had understood as little as we had. By December, we were writing three-hour exams in French on literature, philosophy, linguistics and even Occitan. Even if the material was difficult, writing in French, thinking in French, was second-nature.

So at least the ‘Improve language’ box has been ticked. And what about the ‘Have time of life’ box? This is definitely everyone’s biggest expectation, and probably their biggest let-down. You won’t have the time of your life. You will have to deal with relationship difficulties, crazy landladies, terrible administration, and important deadlines which nobody tells you about. So don’t be deceived into thinking that every day abroad will be a ball, a four month holiday with no challenges. Let’s face it – the people who describe it in this rose-tinted way are the fourth years who have just moved back to a frankly very grey and drizzly country to start their finals.

But I do understand what they mean when they say that it’s one of the best things you’ll ever do. Living abroad will improve your independence and self-confidence in a way that moving to an English university can’t. You’ll meet people and have experiences that you would never have been introduced to at home. You'll see amazing new places. For me, the first four months have helped me find an inner strength and confidence I didn’t even know I had.

So no, this is not the most amazing experience ever. Sometimes, honestly, it’s rubbish. But living abroad is still the best thing you can do to improve your language, and on a personal level, it has to be up there as one of the most fulfilling things you can do with your life. As long as you’re realistic about the ups and downs of moving country it is a genuinely positive experience.

Russia may be completely different – I have no idea. But instead of going out there apprehensive, I’m excited for the challenges I’ll be facing, because while I understand that elements won’t go perfectly, I also know that I’ll overcome them to have a brilliant time. So until then, Happy Christmas, Happy 2012, and onwards to St Petersburg...

Under Pressure

It had to be a Queen title for this post. As I announced over lunch (somewhat killing the sunny vibe), this week marked twenty years since the death of legend Freddie Mercury. More pertinently, however, ‘under pressure’ is probably the best way to describe the Erasmus students of Montpellier at the moment.

I haven’t blogged recently as we have presentations, dossiers and exams to prepare for left, right and centre. However, surviving abroad isn’t all about opening bank accounts, picking courses and passing exams. It’s also about embracing all the things there are available to you in the city that will be your home for at least four months. So in this post I will mainly be trying to cheer everyone up by talking about all the excitement Montpellier has on offer.

For all our complaining about the poor administration of the city and the frankly ridiculous exam system of the university, day-to-day Montpellier offers us everything from cultural places to good drinking establishments. For those seeking a bit of culture, or something to show the parents, the Musée Fabre displays works from classical sculpture to modern art, with constantly changing exhibitions and events, and is free to students at Université Montpellier III (Paul-Valèry). Montpellier’s cathedral, whose architecture is spectacular, boasts a stunning interior and, despite having sustained damage in the Wars of Religion in the 16^th century, was rebuilt and remains a central part of the historic city. If you’re seeking a quiet corner to soak up the Mediterranean atmosphere, the place to go is the Jardin des Plantes, the oldest botanical garden in France.

For the more energetic people, there is no better way to take in Montpellier’s real beauty than by heading to the viaduct, or alternatively the helipad at the top of the Corum. Both offer stunning panoramic views over the city and towards the mountains. When you feel like there’s nothing you’d like better than to fly home to England, watching a sunset from the Corum with a group of friends and a bottle of wine is the perfect way to remind you of just how lucky you are to be in the south of France.

Montpellier manages to offer not only mountain views, but beaches as well – 15 minutes away on the bus, there is the Grande Motte and Palavas les Flots, both beautiful beaches which are perfect for a Sunday afternoon lounge in the sun or swim in the sea right until the end of October. And if you want a bit of excitement, Palavas has a bull-running event at the end of September which is worth checking out for a bit of local culture! Being in the Med is such a hard life.

If you’re more interested in the natural world, the zoo is the place to be. Free of charge, and spread over a vast space, it houses animals from all over the world in large natural environments – and if you can’t get close to the animals themselves, there’s also wooden sculptures of them which provide an excellent play area for 20-something students to run wild. The Serre Amazonienne costs only €3 for students, and is a tropical paradise to wander round. And the tarantula is hidden round a corner, so you only have to see it if you go looking for it (I didn’t.). On a rainy day, the zoo’s alternative is the aquarium, out at Odysseum. At €12,50 for students, it’s more expensive than the majority of the city’s attractions, but offers everything from penguins to sharks and is well worth checking out.

Odysseum is found at the end of tramline 1, and is frankly an odd place. Absolutely huge, it comprises a shopping centre and numerous activities spread out over two tram stops, here including bowling, go-karting, a cinema, an ice-rink and a planetarium, all of which cost students about €4 - €10. Be warned, there is an arcade by the bowling alley, so we spent considerably more while bowling than we’d intended, due to several vicious air-hockey games. After you’ve worn yourself out indulging in all the activities you haven’t done since the age of 12, you can head to Tommy’s Diner, a neon pink American restaurant, where you listen to classic rock’n’roll, eat proper American burgers and feel like you’re in Back to the Future or Grease.

And so finally I come to what is arguably the most important aspect to all student readers – the nightlife. The place to start would be where we started – Estivales. Running along the Esplanade every Friday night from July – September, Estivales is a soirée which promotes local produce, from wine and food to clothing and jewellery. If you buy a glass for €3, you get three glasses of local wine, and with the Esplanade lit up and live music until midnight, it’s a weekly summer street party. And now it’s November, we’re awaiting the opening of the Christmas market next week, which will run every day from the 3^rd December until Christmas itself.

In terms of pubs and clubs, be warned – beer is extremely expensive over here! Wine is much cheaper, but all in all if you’re heading out for the night, you’ll want to find good happy hours, which often still only reduce the prices to what we’re used to in England. The Rebuffy is a great pub to go to as it feels very French, is in a nice little square, offers a wide selection of board games, and has very good wine for very little money!

Of course, the highlight of every week is the pub quiz at the Shakespeare. Every Tuesday we arrive early, grab a table and play overly-competitive card games or Trivial Pursuit until the quiz starts. In fact a few weeks back we threw off the clearly unlucky shackles of team name Quizteama Aguilera and stormed to victory as Quizpy Fried Duck. Unfortunately we haven’t managed to repeat that success yet, but we’re still flying a pretty respectable quiz flag for the UK and savouring our win (shame we didn’t savour the first-place bottle of whiskey).

So while we feel the pressure of the looming exams, the cultural and social benefits here are second to none. And if you’ve really exhausted everything Montpellier has to offer, there’s always brilliant train connections to various French cities for relatively low prices (get the 12 -25 railcard) I’m heading to Paris for the weekend, then coming back just in time for the Christmas market. Sure there’s pressure...but there’s also the fact that you’re living in France. Make the most of it.

Vigilance Rouge : severe storms with a chance of a heavy workload forecast for reading week.

This week saw the end of Toussaint, the French equivalent of October half term or reading week. This marks the beginning of the downward slope to the end of the first half of my year abroad – in six weeks I’ll have ‘done’ France and be heading home.

It also marks the first serious pieces of work I’ve been given to complete for the university: a commentary, an essay, three presentations to start planning – all of which count towards my final exams, which start in four weeks. Now is probably a good time to reflect on the first half of my actual studying time here.

European universities work with the scheme of ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System), in which students have to take 60 credits per academic year. The requirements of British universities when it comes to selecting modules abroad vary – I’ve met some people who are doing courses to the value of 12 ECTS for the semester, and others who are doing 30. 

UCL requires its pupils to take 23 to 30 ECTS for one semester, and to pass a minimum of 23. We also have to complete a personal project, to be examined orally on our return to university in September. Other universities may stipulate fewer modules, but convert the exam marks for your final grade for the year. It’s important to know exactly what your exams are going to count for before jumping in at the deep end with course choices. Most people from UCL have tried to take about 27, as we’ve discovered that 30 results in an insane timetable, but 23 may not cover you if something goes wrong – for example if you fail a module, or, as one friend found, a teacher changes your timetable halfway through the term.

And it is quite a blind jump. In Montpellier, we’ve found that you can take your pick from virtually any course, open to any year group, at the university. You can mix-and-match between departments. You can even study a few modules of another language, if you’re brave enough. The only real rule is that you can’t study any courses in or about English.

The choice of courses is a process of trial and error – many of us only finalised our timetable by the third week of lessons. Firstly, you have to establish what courses are available during your semester. Then you have to find out how many ECTS they’re worth. Taking our 23 – 30 ECTS requirement as the example, you then have to put together about 27 units worth of courses that look interesting and/or manageable. THEN you head to the noticeboards. This is where the fun really starts. Most departments (not all, because that would be too much like having one standard process throughout the university) put their timetables for the term on their noticeboards, so that, having sorted out what you think you want to do, you can see just how many of your classes clash, and head back to the drawing board.

When you’ve finally got a working timetable, you have to make sure you’re signed up for the classes that fill up really quickly, for example first year literature. It’s best to do this as soon as possible to ensure you get a place – you can always un-enrol later and exam enrolment is a completely different process, so if the class is too tough, it doesn’t matter that much. Enrolment does of course adhere to the usual method of every department having its own process – some you have to enrol online, some on paper, some both, some neither.

So when you’ve worked your entire timetable out, and enrolled for everything, you can start attending lessons – you’re not necessarily in the clear just yet, as some may simply prove too hard. Two weeks in, I sat through a second year class of Medieval History. I left at the break, without the first idea of what had been said, and needing to find myself another 5 credits.

However, you do work it out eventually – and teachers aren’t really bothered by people arriving two or three weeks in. Most seem very understanding about Erasmus students, and want to give you all the help they can.

So, I’ve ended up doing a selection of translation (easy to understand and great for language practice), literature (fine, the tutors are quite understanding to the plight of the Erasmus student), philosophy (hard but interesting), a course called ‘Origines et Diversité des langues’ (great, the tutor does a PowerPoint of all the notes, so you don’t miss any) and (perhaps foolishly) Occitan. 

Occitan is the regional language of parts of the south of France, and isn’t really used much, if at all, today. The culture lessons are taught by a typically bumbling history professor who goes off at tangents and potentially has never heard of ‘Erasmus students’. The language lessons are taught through the medium of poetry, song and dance. So I’d advise you to take Occitan only if you’re happy to be a little confused, and if you don’t mind looking like an idiot as you flap your arms to differentiate between a big bird and a little bird. That said, it is quite amusing.

Aside from the odd moments of confusion, though, it’s working out pretty well. Luckily, reading week also seemed to herald the beginning of monsoon season, as a week of constant storms ensued, Languedoc-Roussillon flooded, and we were put on ‘Vigilance Rouge’. We were advised not to go out unless we had to, and told to stock up on essentials and drinking water etc. Panic stations, essentially. I haven’t left my house properly in five days – but this might not be the worst thing, as it’s given me time to get on top of all my work. It’s hit me just how much there is to be done over the next few weeks, and kick-started the really serious bit of the Erasmus experience – studying French properly. So grudgingly, thank you Weather Gods. But not for the pool of water by my window.

How to save your money (but not the rainforests)

So, you’ve moved country. Found a place to live. Made friends.  Started to settle in. There can’t be much more to worry about, right? Sorry, wrong.

Once the move is over, you have a couple of days to get over the fact that you’ve moved to a new country, and then you have to turn your attention the practicalities of living abroad. This doesn’t just mean locating the nearest place to buy your morning baguette (although this is obviously high on the list of priorities). Living abroad isn’t cheap, so you need to consider the best way of getting around the town, the cheapest way to pay your rent, whether or not you can apply for the CAF (a government-based allowance which students in France can claim towards their monthly rent), what phone contract to have, and so on.

It has to be said, the administrative system in Montpellier is simultaneously very bureaucratic and quite, well, archaic. Every possible transaction, whether it’s at the bank or your university, requires a million pieces of paper to be signed by a million different people. I’m not actually sure any longer what I signed up for at the bank, because I must have written my signature around fifteen times. All the pieces of documentation required wouldn’t be too problematic – if there was anywhere to print them.

In fact when asking where you can find printers in university, you are met with puzzled looks and vague directions to the photocopying room – which is frequently closed. There are a couple of internet cafes which will print and scan near the university, but it’s better to go prepared. In the first week I was asked repeatedly for copies of my passport, health card, letter of student status, letter of Erasmus status, learning agreement and so forth. These are all things that you’ll receive well before you leave the country, and I cannot recommend enough making about five copies of each before you move. You can guarantee that for everything you apply for, you’ll be told there’s at least one more form you need to fill in, so you might as well go with the basics pre-prepared. More often than not, your landlord will have to fill out an attestation de logement and provide you with a copy of their passport and a bill to prove your address – so it’s worth getting several copies of these in one go too.

For the majority of people, a French bank account is indispensable.  If you pay rent to a foreign account by bank transfer, the fees from English accounts can range from £10 - £30. Meanwhile, it costs to make basic withdrawals, so more often than not with an English account to avoid extra outlay it’s necessary to withdraw large amounts in one go – not the most secure process in the world. Furthermore, a French account is essential to claim the CAF.

Whilst opening a bank account can be done in a morning, getting the card can take a long time, and the CAF is an even longer process to sort out (some friends four weeks on are still getting letters demanding more paperwork). There are also as yet unconfirmed ruminations that the CAF is not back-payable, or paid for part-months. So it’s really important that you get on with organising these things as soon as possible to save the maximum amount of money.

A further recommendation in terms of banking is opening an account with someone like Metro Bank, a relatively new bank in England. Whilst online transfers to foreign accounts will still cost upwards of £17, there are no charges on foreign transactions, which means that you don’t pay to put money into your account from another British account, and you don’t pay to withdraw it abroad – and that applies worldwide.

A bank account and the CAF are arguably the most stressful bits of non-uni admin to organise, but another drain on the finances is public transport. Montpellier, for example, is served by a good tram network but it can be expensive. It’s best to investigate TAM (Transport Agglomeration Montpellier), which has monthly student passes for €33 or a yearly one for €240. It’s also possible to rent a bike for the year for €33. Miraculously, getting the tram pass only requires one form to be filled out, a form of I.D., and a passport photo. Of course, there’s always a downside, and in this case it’s the huge queue – it can often be a five-hour wait at peak times, as every student new to Montpellier tries to organise cheap transport for the year. It quietens down at about 5 pm, so that’s the time to go – unless you’re happy to turn up at 7 am.

The last key thing to sort out on arrival is a French phone. This is probably the easiest process – an Erasmus student can always be picked out in a crowd due to the fact that everyone goes into Phone House (yes, the Carphone Warehouse) and gets the same €30 Samsung phone, on the same pay-as-you-go SIM card. It’s the kind of flip-screen phone that everyone got excited about when we were 13 years old and had only ever seen brick-sized Nokias. However, it’s easily sorted out and means that you can be in contact with all your new friends - cheaply. And best of all, there’s no paperwork, which has to be a first.

So it’s all a lot to sort out, and usually takes up your first few lesson-free days, but the sooner it’s organised, the cheaper and easier your time here gets. You may just have to put any environmental ethics aside for a while first.

Dear Bank/University/Mum, I’m writing about my change of address...

I’m slightly nervous about this instalment, because, as with everything so far, finding accommodation hasn’t been a bed of roses. However, to those starting their year abroad preparation now, fear not – it’s not as hard as it seems, and for everyone I know, it’s worked out pretty well.

There are various possibilities when moving abroad as a student. The most obvious is applying for university halls. There’s a lot of competition for these rooms, but, at least in the case of Montpellier’s universities, it was organised early - the application form came with the other enrolment documents, and we were informed if we had a place or not by the end of June. An application is therefore certainly worthwhile – if you get a halls room, the task of finding accommodation can be ticked off, and if not, you have the whole summer to find somewhere else. Usefully, the university also sent plenty of helpful web addresses for accommodation to people who hadn’t got halls places.

Another important fact to note with university halls is that they won’t necessarily let you know if they have spare rooms – two friends emailed them at the end of August to say they had nowhere to live and were immediately found rooms. This isn’t something to bank on, but it’s definitely worth a try if you think you’re still going to be living out of a suitcase in a hostel come the start of term.

Many people also apply for private halls, such as Les Academiades de Montpellier and Les Estudines. Although they are slightly more expensive than university rooms, they tend to be centrally located and have good facilities, including a small private kitchen area and private bathroom. The only slight downside to these halls is that an Ikea trip is essential for everything from bedding to kitchenware, which can get expensive if you’re only going to be there for one semester. On that note, I’m reliably informed that a useful website to know is wedelivertheworld.com – a worldwide shipping agency, which transports your stuff to and from wherever you are based abroad for relatively low prices (a huge bonus to girls with lots of shoes and anyone who’s bought pots and pans for a four-month period). Always worth knowing, as airline fees for extra luggage are extortionate, especially if paid for at the airport.

The final accommodation alternative is a colocation, in other words living with a family or other students, which is what I’ve done. It’s a common way of finding accommodation for students abroad, as it’s usually relatively cheap and guarantees that you’ll be speaking the language to others in the house.

There are plenty of good websites for finding a colocation, the most popular for France being appartager.com and accueilenfamille.com, both of which I’ve used. These websites give you the opportunity to specify your exact needs and then offer the best possible matches to your profile.

Of course, it’s important to arrange accommodation like this safely.  I decided to live with another UCL student, which made the whole process more manageable and less terrifying, and also gave us safety in numbers. We started looking in July, which is just about ideal - by August, especially in student cities such as Montpellier, competition for rooms is immense. Even in July, I arranged four viewings, and by the time I arrived in Montpellier, a week later, three of the rooms were taken.

If you’re moving into a private house, viewings are essential (especially if you’re asked for a deposit). You need to ensure that you’re living with relatively normal people, and that the house is secure and in a safe area. It’s also a good chance to verify in person things like what your rent covers, local amenities and transport, if you need to bring anything (bedding, cookware etc) with you, how rent is paid etc. These may all seem like basic things, but in a town where buses stop at 8.30 pm, you don’t want to find on arrival that you either can’t socialise in the evenings or you have an hour’s walk home through a dubious area. 

Also, to reiterate a message given out on the websites: don’t pay any deposit without seeing the place (just in case it doesn’t exist...) and without some form of receipt and contract.

Of course, these measures don’t guarantee success...We congratulated ourselves on sorting out rooms with a family, under a four-month contract, by August. Two weeks after moving into our house in September, we were told that actually, we’d have to leave on 1^st October. Apparently our family hadn’t foreseen the potential problems of combining two student lodgers (one of whom would live in the converted attic, with a VERY creaky floor) with having a toddler aged three and a baby of two months.

This was obviously an awkward situation, exacerbated by the mother of the family, who – either through awkwardness or a desire to ensure we left quickly (and without an argument about their breach of contract!) – stopped speaking to us, and instead communicated with us via post-it note. It was surreal to say the least – the first day there were no fewer than 10 notes dotted around ranging from “clean!”, with an arrow pointing to a mark on the sink, which neither myself nor my housemate had made, to (I quote) “take your hairs out of the shower or the pipes will get blocked up with shit”.

Luckily, they put us in touch with Accueil en Famille, who found us somewhere else to look at straight away, which was not only fine, but perfect – cheaper, closer to university and our friends, with a much more sociable and welcoming family, and with a private pool. There must be a catch with it somewhere, but so far (with fingers duly crossed and touching wood) we’ve yet to find it.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as we announced we’d found somewhere new, the post-it orders stopped.

Obviously this is a very rare scenario. Everyone else I know has settled in well immediately at their houses, and we’ve now settled in well here. If a family or group of students are looking to rent a room to a foreign student, chances are they’re going to be welcoming and understanding – and it’s a brilliant way to meet people and ensure that you’re speaking French at least once a day in one capacity or another.

From the point of view of ease, I’d hoped to get a university room, but actually I’m happy about the way living with a family has worked out (in the end). I think it really is worthwhile. Maybe just avoid families with tiny babies, for their sake and yours.

How to make friends and NOT alienate people

Sitting by the pool of my house in the south of France, it feels ridiculous to say that at points September hasn’t been the best month ever of my life. It’s been a long journey to reach this year for me, and there’s no denying there have been times I’ve asked myself if it’s all going to be worth it.

Moving away from home is hard at the best of times, especially relocating to a different country. My experience was made all the harder by the fact that my boyfriend – a relatively long-term one, for a 22 year old – split up with me completely out of the blue. Two days before I was due to leave the country. With his family. We were going on holiday in Carcassonne, and then his dad would drive me on to Montpellier. A week before the most important and most terrifying year of my degree started, I suddenly was not only dealing with a shock break-up, but also had no way of getting to France.

This is the point when you realise the importance of friends and family – one best friend watched Lord of the Rings and ate pizza with me for an evening, the other came the next day, brought me wine and packed everything for me. My dad appeared in London within hours and took me to my sister’s house. My sister put me up for the extra week, booked my flights and generally pep-talked me into not giving up. In short, everyone was brilliant.

On the other hand, I didn’t really have much time to feel sorry for myself, as I had one week to move house, sort flights out and generally pack and repack until I only had exactly what I needed (even then it cost me an extra £40 of luggage weight...). So it wasn’t until I actually arrived in Montpellier that I had time to sit and think everything through. Of course at that point, all helpful friends and family were all back in England.

Skype is of course a godsend, but it’s not a solution. Logically I couldn’t hope to spend four months abroad relying on people at home to get me through.  The two most important things to fend off the homesickness are undeniably making friends and keeping busy, which usually go hand-in-hand.

So I did what all students and teenagers of my generation do: I turned to Facebook. Very helpfully, UCL had sent everyone the same list of study abroad placements, so I simply found out through that who would be in Montpellier this term, added several complete strangers as friends, and made a group. That meant that the nine of us from UCL all had an immediate social base of people with whom we could guarantee we had a few common interests.

The other really important thing that helped me was making sure I was in touch with what was going on with all the Erasmus events. Any drinks parties, pub quizzes, picnics...I was there. It was exhausting. But it was brilliant, because everyone is feeling exactly the same – far from home, nervous about making friends and settling in, and so everyone turns up, open-minded and ready to meet people. Not only that, but everyone hails from so many different countries that French is often the common language – so you have to speak it!

A particularly good idea on the part of Montpellier’s Erasmus social team was the picnic and city tour. Like we’d just started primary school, we sat in a circle and said our name and age, and where we came from, and the ice was broken. I went from chatting quietly to two other UCL-ers to inviting Germans to my birthday party the following week, talking football with an Argentinean and making arrangements for drinks with a Polish girl. On the tour, we then met more English girls, who are now among my best friends here. And this all while getting to know our way really well around the city that is our temporary home.

At risk of sounding whiney and pathetic, but also to reassure, I’d say that my experience of coming abroad started on a worse foot than that of many people I’ve met. But really, everyone is in the same boat. I know people whose other halves are having second thoughts now they’ve arrived here. And many people in completely solid long-distance relationships who are, unsurprisingly, finding the separation very difficult. The majority of people have never been this far from their family for this length of time. Homesickness and relationship problems are natural in a situation like this, and it isn’t something to be embarrassed about.

But everyone also finds the same thing: it happens when you’re tired, or hormonal, or when you have nothing organised for the evening or weekend. The best thing to do is prepare yourself for the fact that this will happen, and be ready for it. There’s always going to be the odd evening where you can’t do things or see people – so that’s when you go online and find the rubbishy British TV you miss (or, if you have one, turn the TV on...today’s picks include Walker: Texas Ranger, episodes of Fort Boyard, and Bad Boys II, so I feel really at home).

Otherwise call people, and go shopping, for coffee, to the park, to dinner, for drinks, to the cinema...there’s an endless list of things to do, and you can guarantee that of the many people you’ll get to know within days of arrival, there’ll be at least one person feeling the same as you who will also want to get out of the house and do something.

I’ve spent a month doing this, and have some amazing friends here – I rarely feel lonely. Although I’m usually fairly sociable anyway, I have to be grateful for the fact that the break-up has forced me make the most of my time, and get really into the whole experience. I was hit today by the fact that I only have ten weeks left here. It’s not a long time, and nobody should stop you from getting as much as you possibly can out of it – especially yourself.

I almost didn’t come out at all; I was terrified of how I’d cope. And there have been times I’ve wanted to jump on a plane home. But I’ve been strict with myself, and stuck at it thus far. And that’s why I’ve just pulled myself out of my home’s swimming pool in 30-degree heat before going for drinks with my friends. So for all the times I’ve asked myself if it’s all going to be worth it, the answer is still a resounding yes.

“This is all already on the website...”

This time last year, I was heading back to university anticipating an immediate influx of emails and information about study abroad. Three twelve week terms actually isn’t that long to work out where you’re going to go to, what you’re going to do there and what you need to do to organise it, while still trying to do all your university work and exams.

At the end of October, three weeks into the first of these terms, we finally got our first email telling us when the first meeting was going to be. It wasn’t until mid-November that I’d had my first meetings for both departments, and these mainly just outlined our options.

The year abroad is arguably the most important part of a languages degree, so it’s important to have a clear idea of what you want to do with your time, and where you want to go. Often deadlines for finalising these decisions are in December or January, and so thinking about what you want to do in mid-November doesn’t allow much time for decision-making. All the information about year abroad options is on departmental websites – it’s better to start thinking about what it is that you really want to do when you start second year, rather than waiting to be prompted by the university.

Having worked for a French firm before, I wanted to work for them in Paris during the first semester of my year abroad. The whole process, from finding out whom I should contact, to hearing about the results of my interview, took from September to January. Fairly typically, having interviewed me, they then told me that they only really wanted to take French business school graduates who could do six to nine month contracts, a profile which I evidently do not fit. However setting work up abroad is no mean feat, and if it’s something that you’re really keen on doing, there’s no way you can wait for the university to tell you to start thinking about your plans.

The other lesson that the process taught me was to be fully aware of all the options – as I was so involved with getting a job, I didn’t think too much about university and Erasmus placements. I found out that I didn’t get the job on the day that Erasmus placement applications were due in, leaving me about two hours to decide on my top three French universities. I was lucky, as prior to my job application I’d looked into the cities available for exchanges, and it didn’t take me long to make my mind up – but for such a big decision it really illustrates the importance of being completely aware of all the possibilities, and not putting all your eggs in one basket.

The other thing this experience gave me early warning of is the importance of making yourself really aware of all the deadlines. The language departments face the difficulty of having to communicate a huge amount of information to a huge number of people, so the meetings were frequently a couple of hours long and contained a lot of generic information. All the study abroad coordinators made exactly the same mistake – almost every meeting started with the phrase “We’ll put this up on the website tomorrow”, and those that didn’t seemed to consist of following the web pages on a large screen. There is no better way of ensuring that students won’t actually listen. Instead we all moaned about how we’d have been better spending the time finishing that essay/translation and how we’d definitely just read all the information online or in the handbooks instead. We then proceeded to mutter between ourselves. We got home and forgot to read anything online.

But somewhere in those two hours of generic information, the odd really important fact or deadline is thrown in. One meeting it may be the deadline for Erasmus grant bank details submission. Another time it will be the date by which you must have applied for insurance. Someone at some point will tell you how long it takes to get a European Health Card, and someone else will mention that actually, if you’re going to Russia, your passport needs to be in date up to six months AFTER your visa expires.

All these snippets of information are carefully hidden between the things that someone else had already said and the things that it just takes common sense to know. Or alternatively, they’re dotted around several different emails and two or three different websites. For me, the best idea was to write down every single date I found out, in chronological order, on one piece of paper, as one giant year abroad to-do list. And actually, that also helps to quantify what seems like a huge indefinable experience into a series of small, logical tasks.

There’s enough stress involved in trying to sort out what you want to do with your year abroad while trying to pass second year. It’s senseless to add more pressure by not keeping up-to-date with options, requirements and deadlines. I’m lucky, Montpellier is a brilliant place – but I could have easily ended up stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be for four months. Plus you need to be on the ball when you arrive, because the admin starts all over again – there’s no time to be tying up loose ends in England.

For most languages students, the year abroad is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. It is the most important year of our degree. And with the right awareness of the preparation and decision-making process, it has the potential to be one of the most exciting years of our lives.