{"id":374,"date":"2016-11-14T13:04:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T13:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-abroad\/?p=374"},"modified":"2016-11-14T13:04:37","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T13:04:37","slug":"student-blog-helen-just-thought-you-ought-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/2016\/11\/14\/student-blog-helen-just-thought-you-ought-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Student blog: Helen &#8211; &#8220;Just thought you ought to know&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The past\u00a0weeks have been a blur (as is now becoming the norm), but I wanted to take a couple of minutes to fill you in on (some of) the things you ought to know before studying abroad- especially in second year!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Administration abroad is not necessarily what you&#8217;re used to; here there isn&#8217;t really a centralised hub of information, so use those friends on your course\/lecturers\/flatmates to check that you&#8217;re not missing out on something important.<\/li>\n<li>Additionally, living together abroad is also not necessarily the same as what you&#8217;re used to. Going from a flat of 8 who (mostly) kept their doors open to a flat of 3 where the doors are pretty much always shut is quite a change. See where these friends come in again?<\/li>\n<li>The first few weeks are tough. Make sure that you&#8217;re keeping in contact with people back home if you&#8217;re struggling with homesickness and\/or mental health, whilst also trying to build a network of new friends here. You&#8217;ll need people to fall back on.<\/li>\n<li>The workload in second year is a big step up from first year, even if you stay in Lancaster, so prepare to be (more than slightly) overwhelmed when you start the academic year.<\/li>\n<li>Make time to travel- you (if you&#8217;re anything like me) do need to set aside time to travel. I can very easily get caught up with work and not give myself a break, but when you&#8217;re in mainland Europe it&#8217;s so much closer to travel (never before have I been able to do a day trip to Z\u00fcrich).<\/li>\n<li>The vast majority of people you will meet on Erasmus are in their third year of a four year course. People will ask why you are here. &#8220;Because I can&#8221; works well as a reply.<\/li>\n<li>Germany is cold. Yes, this needed its own bullet point. Bring long-sleeved tops, hats, scarves, gloves, coats (and anything you can layer), else you will freeze.<\/li>\n<li>On the other side, Germany is cheap. Or England is expensive (it&#8217;s definitely England that&#8217;s expensive). You&#8217;re saving on tuition fees, food and accommodation, which really adds up.<\/li>\n<li>You will meet a lot of people from a lot of countries, and it&#8217;s amazing. I know that this is possible in Lancaster, but when you&#8217;re in a different country it&#8217;s so much easier. This being said, integrating with German people isn&#8217;t as easy as I thought it would be (but it does happen- clubs\/sports are great for this).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think that&#8217;s all my advice for now. I&#8217;ll pop some pictures from Z\u00fcrich and the Rhine Falls underneath (because it was so pretty), and well&#8230; talk soon?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-376\" src=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-abroad\/files\/2016\/11\/IMG_9550-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"img_9550\" width=\"676\" height=\"507\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-377 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-abroad\/files\/2016\/11\/IMG_9562-e1479128830573-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"img_9562\" width=\"676\" height=\"901\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-378\" src=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-abroad\/files\/2016\/11\/IMG_9709-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"img_9709\" width=\"676\" height=\"507\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-379 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-abroad\/files\/2016\/11\/IMG_9729-e1479128791996-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"img_9729\" width=\"676\" height=\"901\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-380\" src=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-abroad\/files\/2016\/11\/IMG_9758-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"img_9758\" width=\"676\" height=\"507\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The past\u00a0weeks have been a blur (as is now becoming the norm), but I wanted to take a couple of minutes to fill you in on (some of) the things you ought to know before studying abroad- especially in second year! Administration abroad is not necessarily what you&#8217;re used to; here there isn&#8217;t really a&hellip; <a class=\"continue\" href=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/2016\/11\/14\/student-blog-helen-just-thought-you-ought-to-know\/\">Continue Reading<span> Student blog: Helen &#8211; &#8220;Just thought you ought to know&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/2016\/11\/14\/student-blog-helen-just-thought-you-ought-to-know\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Student blog: Helen &#8211; &#8220;Just thought you ought to know&#8221;<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[4,14,8],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-erasmus","category-germany-destinations","tag-erasmus","tag-germany","tag-tubingen","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}