Building a Life Abroad

By Tara Brougham, University of Melbourne, Australia

I arrived in Melbourne for my exchange nearly 3 weeks ago, and the last three weeks have been a whirlwind of meeting new people, getting to grips with classes in another academic system and all the (sometimes boring) life admin you have to do to live somewhere new. The vast number of things I needed to do once I had arrived in Melbourne was overwhelming, so the aim of this post is to make it that little bit easier for anyone else embarking on exchange, particularly in Australia.

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Some things to bring back from your study abroad experience

By Hannah Wheeler, Vrije Universitiet, Netherlands

Going back home always holds challenges. Sometimes it is easy to fall back into old roles and forget about the experiences and developments that you have gone through. Even just going back from university to your home city with your family, it’s easy to slip back into old habits. This was something I was worried about when I thought about going back to Manchester after my year in Amsterdam. I was scared of returning to my default student ways. Not that all the defaults are a bad thing, but also some I had grown out of in my year away. Your environment is a massive impacting factor in how you behave and what you focus on. So naturally, moving countries will affect you. It’s not easy. 

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