Personal Erasmus Report: Vera Sinkovics
Host University: Alcalá de Henares, Spain, first semester study year 2018/2019
The first semester of the study year 2018/2019 I studied at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain. I chose this university for a number of reasons. After doing the language minor in Spanish, I decided that I really wanted to go to Spain to improve my Spanish more and also do courses in Spanish. In the end I decided to go to university of Alcalá, which technically is connected to history, but application is also open to students of IRIO. Alcalá is pretty small which means that the rent is low, but very close to Madrid so you are never bored there because at any moment you can just get on the train to Madrid to explore there.
I went there with the idea to do courses in history, which I’m really interested in. These courses were all at the faculty of Filosofía y Letras, which is comparable to the Arts faculty here in Groningen. The courses that I chose in the end were: Historia de la Antiguëdad 1, Filosofía Género y Emancipación, Relaciones Internacionales, Historia del Arte Moderna, Historia Moderna de América, all for 6 credits. In the end I passed two of those five courses: Relaciones Internacionales and Historia Moderna de América. On top of these courses I did a B2 language course, which was recommended by the university, at the language institute called Alcalingua, which is part of the university as well. The classes of the Alcalingua course were 3 times a week in the evening, for 6 credits. This course I also passed. The Alcalingua language course I can really recommend. In the end it helped so much with my Spanish to have some extra classes because there was a lot of hard grammar that I needed to grasp but I didn’t yet when I came there. With a student discount is costs €200,- which is a lot but for me it was worth it. The reception at the host university was pretty good. We got emails about exactly where to go for registration and the welcoming ceremony. The ESN in Alcalá is really active and also organized a lot of activities in the first week (and after that as well). However, the reason that in the end I only passed three courses of the six was that there were some things that threw me off guard a little bit:
When I had to choose my courses, I just chose courses that seemed interesting to me based on the course guide. These courses where all in Spanish, so there was no way for me to know in advance if I would even be able to understand the specific professor of my courses. When I got there, there where also some problems with the time schedule so I knew that I just had to go to as many classes as I could the first week to try and see which ones were suitable and where I could understand the professor. The problem was that for history the classes were only given in the morning, so literally everything overlapped. It was almost impossible to find some suitable courses where I could understand the professor and that didn’t overlap, so in the end I also chose courses from humanities, and a course from the “Curso Superior de Lengua y Cultura Hispánicas.” I only chose one course from the Curso Superior, but this was a big mistake. The courses from the Curso Superior are designed for international students, they are taught in Spanish but require a lower level, and professors talk slower and in more clear language. But I didn’t want to choose too many courses from the Curso Superior because there
are no Spanish people in those courses. In the end it turned out that I had set the bar extremely high for myself by choosing only courses in Spanish, choosing the high level courses, in a subject that I was not yet familiar with.
The way of teaching at the university of Alcalá is very different than in Groningen. For example, almost nobody uses blackboard or email to communicate. Sometimes you would show up to class and there would just be note on the door saying that it was cancelled. This was really annoying with assignments as well. They would just say in class what you had to do and where to go, but I often missed those announcements because they would go superfast and where also nowhere to found on blackboard or email. There was one professor that distributed the readings via email, but I was for some reason not added to the email list, and no matter how many times I asked, I just didn’t get added. How the classes were taught was also really different. I was all very passive: the teacher would just talk really fast for 2 hours, and there was no interaction. That’s also why I would recommend the courses from the Curso Superior: there we did have interaction in class, discussions or small presentations. All in all the biggest frustration that I had was with the distribution of information in the classes, often it was just completely unclear what you had to do.
One recommendation that I can give is to go IN THE FIRST CLASS that you take to the professor to tell them you’re Erasmus and ask them to explain what the method of assessment is. This can help tremendously with deciding whether the course is suitable for you or not, because the courseguides that they provide do not contain enough information. So the key is to talk to the professors: don’t rely on email or blackboard.
During my stay in Alcalá I stayed in a student residence called DuniaHall, of which the rent was €330,- which is slightly lower than my rent in Groningen. However, I did have to share my room with someone, for approximately half of the time that I stayed there. Unfortunately I did not click very well with my roommate. The single rooms were too expensive for me. From what I’ve heard from other people it’s very easy to find a flat in Alcalá. The best thing to do is to go on the facebook page of the ESN group and ask there. There are almost always people looking for roommates.
The expenses that I had were comparable to what I spend in Groningen, at least for rent, groceries, mobile phone. However, it is a very good idea to have some extra savings to really be able to get the most out of your time abroad. There are a lot of daytrips and weekend trips organized by ESN, but you can also go out by yourself of course. For that it is good to have some extra cash because you will no doubt spend more than here, even if the cost of living is not so different. It’s also a good idea to get a Spanish bank card, because then you do not have to pay extra if you get cash at the machine. You can get those for free when you go get your student card.
Support from the home institution was also good, but I wish that I had had a little bit more guidance with the choosing of the courses. Both the study advisers in Groningen and Alcalá just approved of the courses (which was nice) but I never really had a talk with anyone about if it was a good idea to do all my courses in Spanish, or about the specific courses that I had chosen.
