11th of April. Yes. That’s when my exchange term actually starts!

It has been a loooong wait. All my friends’ pictures, their talks about the places they’ve visited, the #exchangehashtags have tortured me enough!

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Delhi-Abu Dhabi-Frankfurt-Aachen. Ethiad is a rather comfortable airline!

So basically I’m a Mechanical Engineering student, going to RWTH Aachen University, Germany for my exchange in Sem 2. Damn excited to be going to Europe! 3 months of excitement bottled up!

I chose Germany because I am fascinated with it’s culture and it’s history. Sure, the language was going to be a problem, but I took up German 1 in Y2S2 and German 2 in Y3S1, so I had 1 year of learning German. In retrospect, I wish that I had taken up the language modules earlier, or maybe even LPP.

Planning for exchange (academic wise) took a toll though. Starting as early as possible isn’t always the best option. For me, my ‘early’ was toooo early. Most of German universities start their AY/S1 in October and S2 in April. My host uni didn’t really answer my emails properly regarding module mapping, because the exchange was “more than a year later”. To date, I am still having to settle mapping and approvals with NUS and RWTH. The good thing for me was that most of the engineering modules that I wanted to map were pre-approved by NUS, courtesy of the seniors who have gone to RWTH in previous years. The not-so good thing is that I can only take 4 ME modules (1 core and 3 TEs) so I still had to go through the approval process for the non-engin modules. Business module mapping for engineering students is hard.

Being an international student to Singapore, I frequently go back to my hometown during my holidays. Heck, I’ve even started and re-started my life in Singapore twice (once in Sec 3 and once in Year 1). These experiences made my packing for exchange quite a breeze. It was only the last two days that I actually focused on packing. I knew what I would actually use, and what would be considered a waste of precious airline baggage weight quota.

So if you are a junior looking to apply for exchange, here are some tips:

  • If you are reading this in your Y1S1/S2 and you are having even a slight inclination towards a non-English speaking country as a SEP destination, take up the level 1 of the country’s language as soon as possible.  It’ll be really helpful.
  • If you’re going to Germany, use the three months break to brush up your German.
  • Talk to your seniors about module mapping. I wish I would have. So any RWTH ME juniors in subsequent years, do not hesitate to approach me.
  • Make a packing list, and not just at the last minute. Keep adding onto it whenever you remember something that you want to take. Add on first, and only towards the end, take some time out to filter the list out. Again, ask your friends/seniors about what stuff is unnecessary.

If you are not a junior looking to apply for exchange, I hope you had a good read on this :).

More on #vishtravels coming up…

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