January 2019 – Bayes Abroad

Month: January 2019

How to really experience the experience

23rd January 2019 / Samantha Willington / 0 Comments

G’day!

I have recently returned to Cass after studying abroad in Melbourne, Australia for a term. Coming home really hits you hard and it’s quite surreal how much things have changed and also stayed the same… weird sentence I know.

Rewind to my first month in Aus and what I have taken away from it:

Expect the unexpected. YES everyone says it, but it is honestly so so true. I thought I had done all my research and prep… rookie error, NO amounts of prep will help you to determine the things that will go wrong. That being said please do some prep before you go so you are at least slightly familiar with your environments.
You won’t get along with everyone. Again, everyone says it but when you find yourself alone it can be difficult to 1) make friends and 2) make the right friends. I tended to do this through staying in a mixed gender hostel for my first few weeks and doing los of exchange activities and meeting groups after classes for drinks/meals.
Uni will be weird, at first. Remember first starting school? or College? or Cass? The feeling of the new academic environment is exactly the same. It’s normal to feel odd and not know what is going on for your first week or so. Just take it at your own pace to get your bearings and familiarise yourself with your courses.

Fast forward a month or two in to the experience and I had huge experiences, learned so much about Aussie culture and history I otherwise wouldn’t have learnt, brought me closer to wildlife and the environment and made friends for life and fallen in love with one of the places furthest from home. I also took the opportunity to travel the East Coast of Australia and also took a trip to the Fiji Islands in my semester break. If you can budget well and have the funds, that is also something I would highly recommend to do whilst your are there because 1 – any flight is easy once you have travelled 24 hours and 2 – Australian domestic flights are super cheap!

In real time, I have found that my experience in Australia has enlightened me on so many things and offered me huge opportunities, specially regarding placement year applications. Another plus is my Christmas was so stress free and I had a lovely break before coming back to uni this week.

I could not recommend study abroad enough and a huge thanks to the team at Cass for making it possible, keeping in touch and even visiting me whilst I was there! Studying abroad has encouraged me to do more things like this in the future and even opened my eyes to international job prospects!

Here are some of my favourite pictures from the experience:

Until next time!

DO hard things!

19th January 2019 / Karyee Do / 0 Comments

Hi All,

I thought I’d begin my year abroad blog with a brief overview of me. I am a third year student in BSc Business Studies and decided to take a Sandwich year, doing my first semester at University of Hong Kong (HKU) and my second semester at Ross Business School (Michigan).

Did you guys notice my pun in the title (because my surname is Do)? Anyways, before I embarked on my year abroad, I had such a strong, glossy perception of who I wanted to be. I wanted to be surrounded by a large group of friends, do things I did not have the opportunity to do before and to have a permanent smile on me 24/7 because of how great everything was! This was an utterly unrealistic expectation, but I found that my actual first semester abroad was even better than I could hope for!

When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I realised every goal I had despite them being leisure/social goals STILL MEANT that I had to do the difficult job of putting myself out there, being the first to say “Hi” and break the ice. It also meant being vulnerable, putting your pride aside and a hell of a lot of awkward moments. I guess it never occurred to me that everything requires hard work, even making friends.

Nonetheless, I think this skill developed and the rewards reaped was worth any small ounce of hard work required.

Going to conclude this blog by wishing that you all (whether you are abroad or not) have your hard work reaped!

Until next time,

Karyee

Making the most of your exchange!

17th January 2019 / Tulsi Patel / 0 Comments

Semester One at NUS has come to a close and even though I’m here for one more semester, I’ve learnt an incredible amount – about myself and South-East Asian culture. Its been an eye opening experience where I’ve embraced the changes from my daily routine in the UK and have grown as a person. The most important lesson I’ve learnt so far is to keep an open mind and not to panic.

It can be quite a daunting process for anyone that hasn’t experienced living independently; let alone in another country. I took a few steps that helped to smoothen the transition and could be of some use to anyone going on exchange next semester or year.

1. Join the University’s social media groups/pages
I found this was the best way to engage with other Exchangers and helped to settle any queries I had because most of the time we had similar questions. It was a great way to organise meet ups and plan our travels.

2. Pursue any interests you have
University can be stressful with the attached workload thats for sure, but studying abroad provides you the chance to take up any interests – which could be absolutely anything ranging from an activity to learning another language. With this in mind I decided to give dragon boat racing a go and it was the most fun!I’ve also chosen to learn Mandarin next semester as one of my modules.

3. Budget
I know this can be painstakingly dull but budgeting is extremely helpful when you want to travel during the semester. Its also good to have a track of all the transactions made.

On a side note travelling this semester has been amazing! In my first semester I travelled to:

Vietnam