Personal Erasmus report
Sanne Oud
s.a.oud.1@student.rug.nl Sapienza Università di Roma
European Languages and Cultures / Lettere Moderne
For my Erasmus Exchange, I went to study in Rome for five months. My program does not have a contract with a university in Rome, but I wanted to try to apply anyway. Luckily, I got chosen for the spot in Rome and could go to Sapienza
Università di Roma. In the first contact, I received a few emails, carefully explaining everything I needed to do. For the first part, this really helped me, and everything was very clear. But they were very slow with signing and sending documents, which caused some frustration. In the week before my departure, I received an email with information about the ‘International Welcome Week’, which caused me having a lot of confidence in their reception of international students. Unfortunately, this was misplaced. The welcome week seemed to have been for fulltime students. I was actually sent away by some people, who refused to help me, because I was just an Erasmus student, and not a fulltime student. I did get a booklet with information, but there too was little practical, and sometimes even wrong, information. Their
explanation of how the Wi-Fi worked for example, was simply untrue. Another student had to help me. Neither did they explain that you cannot enroll for courses, but you just had to show up. This too was explained by other students.
For my accommodation, a partner of the university contacted me, but it was unclear that they were partners. I got my accommodation from a partner of the local ESN organization. Finding a room was fairly easy.
My first week of class was awful. I met a teacher that was very aggressive towards Erasmus students, and told me, in front of a room with 300 students, that I was not welcome in that class, because my level of Italian would be too low. Furthermore, there were 300 students crammed into a classroom suited for only 180 students. I chose to switch to another course, where I met very kind teachers. After I switched
to another course, my experience with the classes and the teachers became fairly positive. I took four courses, all in linguistics: Glottologia e linguistica intermedio (6 ECTS), Dialettologia italiana (6 ECTS), Filologia Romanza IIA (6 ECTS) and Pensiero del Linguaggio (6 ECTS). I also had to switch a course because it was not clear when some classes would take place. Even though the site said it would be in semester A, it appeared in semester B. The quality of education was confusing. The seminars and lectures seemed to contain very little information, with way too much focus on unimportant details. However, the exams were about a lot of information/material.
I earned all my credits and passed all my courses. Two of which with an oral exam. I was very nervous for these, but it was less scary than I feared. The written exams were chaotic but went fine in the end. I think the important lesson to take from a semester in Rome, is to accept that everything is messy and chaotic. It is simply how it is.
The contact with my teachers was good, even though they never answered more than one question in an email. But they were friendly and were surprisingly flexible when it came to exams. The Italian students were hard to make contact with. They were grouped together, and it was hard to become a part of that group. My
friendships mostly came from contacts through ESN and my roommates.
At the end of my stay, the signing of the documents was very problematic. The woman that needed to sign my Transcript of Records, did not show up for her own office hours, in the busiest week of the year. Without any notice or warning, which caused for many students to wait there impatiently for nothing.
The money was ok. The accommodation was a lot more than it was in Groningen, but the groceries are pretty much the same price. And the tickets for the metro and busses were kind of cheap, because you can take a monthly pass. The only expense I did not take into account, was the price of water. Tap-water was not so tasty, which made me buy water from the supermarket all the time.
Despite some small difficulties, Rome has been the best city to live in. I was
completely hung up on the city and even on the university. This has truly been the best half a year of my life and not a day goes by that I do not actively think of packing my bags and going back.
My biggest recommendation is the following:
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Accept the irregularities and try to embrace them, enjoy them. This has given me the opportunity to look at life completely differently, which made me appreciate it even more. Go and see all the cool places Rome has, and visit the cities in the neighborhood. Talk to Romans, find wall art, find the poems written on every wall in Rome. Go and eat in the best restaurants, and find out everything you can about Italian food. Go to Tivoli, go to Eataly (food warehouse), visit the musea on the early hours. Walk along the Tiber when the sun is going down, which makes for the prettiest skies ever. Live Rome, Love Rome, make it your new home.
