Kate's life experience in Scotland

Hello,

My name is Kate and I am a German student who studied at UWS together with Timothée in the last year.

Before I came to Scotland I spend two years studying Hospitality and Tourism Management in northern Denmark. This was in English language too. But since this Danish program just lasted two years I had to continue with any other program to get my Bachelor. This is why I spend my last year in 

Scotland.

When you are living in another country you will quickly notice some advantages, but even quicker all disadvantages that your life there brings you. One of the disadvantages in Denmark was that we had a third language (Danish) there. My mother tongue is German, the education was in English and also all social life was taking place in English language since we were three classes of international students. So we basically had no real contact to Danish people. I guess some of them were also too lazy to talk English. It was like: “You are in our country, so learn Danish!” Well, we did. At least some of us. Those got contact to Danish people and the culture in language classes very quickly. But since I had a few years of Danish lessons in High School already I saw no real reason why I should pay several hundred Crowns for language lessons I already had at school. But now in the end I regret it. Because real Danes can teach you their language much better than school ever can. So my first advice: No mater if you already speak the language of the country you are going to, take part in language classes, even if it is just for making connections to other international or local people. It´s worth it!

So after this language experience (don´t get me wrong I am still in love with Scandinavia and those were the best two years of my life!) I decided to try another country with English as its first language to make life easier and continue my English life I had all the years before, in a real English surrounding. Since America is so far away and the flight expensive, Canada is too and Malta is too warm for me, my only choice was Great Britain. I always dreamt of studying in Oxford or Cambridge. I always knew that that won´t be possible, but there are a lot of other Colleges and Universities over there that look quite the same and have a similar Student life and atmosphere. So I did research on the Internet and ordered all prospectus I could find from nice, old unis that had a tourism or hospitality program. So around Christmas time I spend weeks reading and checking the approximately 50 prospectus (actually you should rather call them books) I got. Conclusion: There were a lot of nice unis, also some partnering ones with my Danish school, but you had to pay high fees in order to study there.

Back in Denmark after Christmas I made an appointment with the international secretary of our school to get more information also on how to avoid this fees. But that appointment was useless. As she, after about 30 minutes, finally understood that I DIDN´T wanted to do a semester abroad, BUT leave my current school for good and go to GB to study there, she saw no reason in further helping me to organize this. So for the second time in my life I had to organize all this by myself. But that was ok, I enjoyed it the first time and was looking forward to do this again and since I got a lot of experience the first time I won´t make some mistakes again this time. At least that was what I thought. But experiences always come shortly after you needed them and are not always transferable. But I had hoped at least to get some information on how to apply.

But, well...Let´s do it alone again! Well not totally alone since at that point some of my friends and classmates also slowly decided to leave Denmark to maybe continue in an English speaking country. We did some research together and found out that in Scotland you don´t have to pay fees at all! At least if you are a European Student and no credits are transferred to your home university. So we decided to apply in Scotland. At this point we were 3 girls who went to Scotland. We wanted to stay together so we applied for the same unis. At UCAS you have 4 choices you can apply for (UCAS is the college application system for GB). So we decided for 3 courses at Edinburgh Napier University and one at UWS. Actually none of us wanted to go to UWS but we still had a choice left to fill. Edinburgh seemed a much nicer destination to us.

But like always... life doesn´t go the expected way. Edinburgh wasn´t allowed to take more international students since they already took too much the previous years. So our only uni we got accepted at was UWS. We were sad, but hey... let´s do the best with this chance!

Somehow I personally was lucky too, because UWS had an enterprise program in which I was very interested, since I did some courses in Denmark already, maybe I could get a chance to change my major from tourism to enterprise?

So before we went to Scotland in September 2010 we had to apply for the payment of our fees at SAAS. They are paying fees if you meet their guidelines. Also we had to find a flat. In the end this was my job which wasn´t always that easy. I had to meet expectations of 3 girls, find a flat with 3 separate rooms (in our old flat you had to walk through my room to get to the bathroom, such situation we wanted to avoid this time). But all the flats in Glasgow were either unfurnished, too small, too dirty or too expensive. Or, most often, we already had to rent it from beginning of summer since that is when everyone is moving out. Moving into the dorm in Paisley would maybe have been easier, but we didn´t wanted to live in a dorm again and also we wanted to live a “big city life”. Finally, about 3 weeks before our arrival, we found a flat. The landlord was very helpful and reserved the flat for us so that I could talk with the other girls. It was all ok and finally we rented the flat. Since we weren´t in Scotland jet we couldn´t look at the flat so we just knew it from pictures we got. But we had no choice, we just had to trust him. So we paid deposit and the first rent and in the beginning of September I was the first of us who went to Scotland (The girls followed a few weeks later). But like always in life, if after a lot of problems something seems too good to be true it most often is.

So I arrived at the flat. The house looked ok, the stairwell not really but after some experiences with stairwells, today I must say it was beautiful :D.

Our landlord promised to have a professionally cleaned flat ready for moving in. I arrived, and well... cleaning is a quite relativistic topic. It was dusty, dirty, a smell of smoke, huge black chewing gum spots in the carped all over, and the kitchen was one sticky room full of fat. But I had no choice. We had our contract. The only thing was that it was an old flat and it was dirty. Dirt is not a matter of such a contract and he told us before that it was no new furniture. But as a student you just have to experience this and life with it. So the first thing I did was buying cleaning equipment. Luckily a shop was right around the corner as well as the subway and all bus connections. This was another reason why we took that flat.

So I arrived and I had a flat. Not perfect but at least I didn´t have to worry about this any longer. Fresheners week at uni was good. I chose not just to study tourism as what I applied for, but to change my major into entrepreneurship. This was the best decision ever. So for the next 2 semester I studied some tourism, which was boring since I had a full tourism education in Denmark already, and some more entrepreneurship and especially business venturing which was the most interesting. Again, not the first time I study this but it never gets boring and it is a good thing to view entrepreneurship from different viewpoints. But I must seriously say that there are much better schools to study tourism than UWS. If you want to study this, choose a school with a whole range of different tourism courses or even a real tourism or hotel school. A few courses at uni like here will never give you a tourism education. I guess you don´t have to study tourism at university to know that you should clean the table after each guest. 

But unfortunately I didn´t experience a lot more about the uni activities in the first week. We were on one student union party, but there we had to experience right away that obviously not taxi is going from Paisley to Glasgow at night. And no taxi from Glasgow to Paisley. And there is just one night-bus to pick up people in Glasgow and bring them home to Paisley. So it was hard for us to get home. Finally we found a nice taxi driver who drove us home because we explained him that we couldn´t get home. And according to all people, Paisley by night is dangerous. Well...maybe. I never experienced it and I also sat at the bus stop for an hour in the middle of the night...nothing. But I guess it also depends on the different areas of Paisley.

Unfortunately I can´t really say anything about living on the campus, clubs and associations. Some of the union parties were quite ok but I guess I am the wrong person to ask about parties. All the student- life and -parties I experienced in Denmark already. After two years I was fed up with student life, this was also one of the reasons why I never attended uni activities and didn´t lived on campus in Paisley. The only thing I did was being a student representative, member of the student board and member of the disciplinary board. If you get the chance I would advice you: do it! You will always be up to date on what’s going on at uni on the administrative level and being in the disciplinary board of the union is fun because you will get to know what’s going on backstage at union parties (who was drunk again, who had a fight with whom again, or if any illegal things were found). Quite nice to see who did illegal things last weekend ;)

But that was my only involvement in uni activities. If you decide, like I did, to live in Glasgow you have to be aware that this will most likely keep you away from all this activities and uni life. You will just come for classes, if you are lucky meet a few people there, but your social life and connection to student life on campus will be quite limited because of all the external conditions and distance. But if this is ok for you and you have a nice flat, Glasgow can be a good place to live. Again, look for the right flat, the right house and the right corner of the city. Some are very dirty with a lot of foreigners, others are very beautiful with nice gardens, parks and museums, but hence more expensive.

After 3 month in our old flat I decided to move out and get a good flat in a nice part of the city for my own. Before you move together with other people make sure you are able to live together with other persons and ignore hair in the sink and dirty plates in the kitchen on a daily basis! :D ….or clean by yourself for all your flatmates.

My new flat was really new. Newly renovated, new furniture, very nice. But also about twice the price I paid before. In Glasgow you won´t find a single flat under 350 pounds a month. Plus gas and electricity you will be at about 400 to 460 pounds per month.

If you have such an expensive flat there is not much more money left for other activities. For me it was very important to have a nice home to live at. This may not be the case for everyone, I know some that don´t care where or how they live, the only important thing for them is to have money for parties. Well...that’s student life and there are different types of persons. This wasn´t important for me so I spend more money on accommodation. But one result was also that I couldn´t see much of the Scottish country. As I arrived I visited different sites in Glasgow for about 10 days and I was in Edinburgh once. But that was all what I got to see about Scotland. Unfortunately not only money was missing to travel around but also time. My courses were quite work intensive, so I didn´t have any time at all to do other things than studying. I don´t know how other people manage a hard student life plus a job and parties at night. I would love to know how they do it. But they have my respect. So I totally focused on studying and with all the work we had I couldn´t have done it different. This is also why I think that there is no point of doing just one semester abroad. You have to settle in, organise your life in the new country, maybe learn the language to even be able to follow lessons, want to travel and take part in other activities. One semester is not at all enough for all of this! Especially not to learn a language. By the time you may have develop a basic understanding and feeling for the language which would allow you to use it and develop a word pool by daily use of the language, you are leaving the country again. So if your target is to speak a language fluently after your stay, you have to spend 2 semester or a year minimum to also get into the whole culture which is a big help in learning a language. But if you already speak the language fluently and just want to experience a different country one semester could be enough. But don´t expect to have great marks AND experience every aspect of country and culture in this one semester!

So these are my brief experiences about Scotland. I also did my Ba in Enterprise and Tourism that we will get at the ceremony in November which I am looking forward to. Until then I will start my own business with which I am giving practical advices about studying aboard to German students. In September I will return to Scotland again for a weekend to take part in an enterprise boot-camp. I won that place in a business competition we had at uni too, that was the best thing for me at UWS! So with that help I will boost my business some more and hope to be able to help even more students with my experiences.

But one I can give you now: Do a year abroad! Even if you make a lot of bad experiences, it is ALWAYS worth it! Like Winston Churchill said: “It is a big advantage, to make mistakes and experiences from which you can learn, early in life.”

And if I can help you with more advices or if there are any questions, just feel free to write me: ks_andresen@yahoo.de

Take care, good luck and have fun on your year abroad!

Kate :))