BSc Management Part 5: Erasmus: A Must-Have Experience

Hello everyone! ☺

I am writing to you from sunny, a bit windy, but beautiful Trieste! The University of Trieste in Italy is one of the many options that KLU students can choose from when deciding on their semester abroad. It was my first choice because … well, it’s Italy! I never visited the country before, but I have always been interested in its culture and history. I have been living here for two months, and I have gathered a large list of impressions that I can’t wait to share.

Me taking a sightseeing trip in the city of Florence

The University of Trieste

Let me start with some general information.
The University of Trieste (UNITS) is a medium-sized university with 10 departments and around 20,000 students. It is ranked among the top universities in Italy for quality of teaching and excellence of research. There are two programs in the Economics department that are entirely taught in English – one is more finance related, and the other is mainly concerned with management. I am a student on the intensive track of the bachelor’s program, so according to the curriculum I have to take four courses. The ones I chose here are Financial Mathematics, Theory and Techniques for Quality Control, Organizational Behavior and Design, and Management of Innovation.

The Main building

 

Time for impressions:

First of all, when you are a student at a university with around 150 people on campus, any other bigger university seems huge and overcrowded. I was lucky that there were three students from UNITS in Erasmus at KLU, so I knew someone here. If it wasn’t for them, I would constantly have gotten lost the first weeks.

Finding the building was relatively easy – it is not far from the city center and it is easily accessible by bus. I would only recommend walking for the real hiking enthusiasts, since the campus is situated on a hill. The classes are mostly held in the Economics department building, which is not that big. The real challenge is to find your class somewhere else. For me, that was a completely new experience because I am used to having everything in one building – library, study rooms, lectures, cafeteria, etc. Here, they are all located in different places, so it can be a bit hectic at first.

Of course UNITS organized a welcome day for all the new exchange students – but for the business admin students, this day was one week after our lectures started. That wasn’t really convenient regarding enrollment, access to the university network or WiFi, and all the formalities related to joining a new university. It was quite a challenge to get any information on how and where to enroll but eventually, I managed to do it! During our welcome session we were introduced to ESN Trieste (the Erasmus network here) and all their activities. Every Erasmus student gets the ESN card for a small fee and can benefit from many discounts. And the ESN people are the ones who organize events like trips and parties.

Regarding the lectures – I expected to have the classical type of lectures where students just listen and take notes. Of course, some of the classes are exactly like this, but I was pleasantly surprised that some of the courses rely on teamwork and case studies. Another concern, which I realized came from a stereotype of mine, was how the lecturers’ English would be. Well, you can definitely tell that they are from Italy, but I had no problem following them. And I have already taken two exams and I cannot say that the experience was much different than at KLU. Perhaps the only difference is that you have to enroll online and that the exams are not anonymous.

I decided that it would make more sense to write this blog in two parts, so here I am mainly telling you about the academic experience, and next I will talk about life as an Erasmus student in Trieste.
See you soon with more information on what it is like to have your exchange semester in Italy! ☺

A campus view

The economic faculty

BSc Management Part 4: The Further I Go, The Better It Gets

Hello everyone :)

I want to start by saying that my third semester at KLU was awesome and I can't wait to tell you all about it!

The best word to describe the time between September and December is “intense.” There was basically no time to sit around and be bored since in addition to studying, I had a student job. But let me first tell you about the studying part.

My third semester and coming to terms with “dry subjects” with the help of Julia Roberts

My third semester at KLU involved the following courses: Corporate Finance, Human Resource Management, Macroeconomics and International Business Law. Sounds a bit tough, right? Well, it definitely wasn't the easiest combination of courses. Not only because the content and the workload were difficult, but our lecturers also had very different approaches. It was a challenge, but I believe that we all managed to get through it successfully. My personal favorites from this semester were the courses in corporate finance and macroeconomics, two subjects which are usually referred to as “dry.” But thanks to our professors, I managed to get a broader insight into the material than I would have gotten just from the textbooks. The last thing I would have expected from a macroeconomics class is to listen to “educational rap,” or to learn new corporate finance terms with the help of movie references such as “Pretty Woman,” but this is what we did. Sounds ridiculous – but it really helped to make the subjects interesting and a bit easier to understand.

Exams period - From lone learner to group lover

Right now I can’t help but think of the exams results, which we’re all still waiting for. This takes me to another subject I want to tell you about – exams period.

Since I took on a student job – which I will tell you about below – this semester was tough for me. I had plans to study regularly as we got further into the material, but for some reason they remained just plans. Do you know the feeling when you realize there is less than a month left until exams and you haven’t even started studying seriously? Even though you feel stressed and pressured, you don’t start studying anyway. And finally, there are only two weeks left and you have nowhere to run anymore. This is what happened to me.

 But I wanted to tell you about the good side of exams period at KLU! Back home, we didn’t have much group work in school and we don’t have the culture of studying together in a group. I was used to do everything on my own and thought that studying by myself is the best for me. This semester I decided to try something new – since I realized that studying on my own actually means even more procrastination and unsatisfying results. So I found myself a study group. Despite the stress and the fact that we would spend more than 12 hours daily studying in a small breakout room, there were still moments that made everything seem not so bad after all. We shared brunches, dinners, even small naps – and lots of knowledge! It is just cool to be able to ask someone for help when you don’t understand something. It might not sound too exciting, but for me it was a brand new experience and I would advise future or current KLU students who are “lone learners” to try out a study group because it is definitely part of KLU’s magic.

Studying and working at Yourfone

Outside of the university, life was just as full of events: I decided to take on the challenge of having a student job. I was lucky enough to be offered one at the company where I had done my summer internship: Yourfone. Whenever I had no classes in the morning, I was in the office working. My job was similar to my internship but this time I focused more on dealing with the online campaigns for Yourfone customers. I was responsible for communication with the advertising agency, which helped me to improve my German a lot, since I had to write all the e-mails in German. I really enjoyed working there; the only problem was the distance from my home and the university. A typical day of mine would be leaving my dorm at 7:20 a.m. and after work, university and doing sports – and with the travel time – I would be home at around 10 p.m. This might sound tiring, but I absolutely love this way of living.

New Erasmus exchange students

During the third semester, our class had a few new members who added even more international feeling. We were very happy to welcome eight new classmates from four different countries, thanks to the Erasmus program. In less than a month, it is my turn to have an exchange semester. This is one of the reasons I chose KLU in the first place – the exchange semester is part of the program and is mandatory for each student. When it was my turn to apply for this semester, KLU had partner universities for the bachelor’s program on three continents. Now the university is working hard to get more partners so that students can have a wide variety of institutions to choose from. I wanted to stay in Europe, although Latin America was also quite attractive. My first choice was the University of Trieste in Italy. I am really excited to be going there since I have been interested in the history and culture of this country for a long time. I hope the experience is as amazing as everyone says the Erasmus program is!

Next time I write, I will be away from KLU and Hamburg, but I am sure that I will still have a lot of interesting things to say about my exchange semester! Thanks for reading and see you soon.

Yana