Joyce Pepe
j.pepe.2@student.rug.nl
European Languages and Cultures Universidad de Granada
Personal erasmus report
Between september 5th 2017 and january 26th 2018 I have been living in Granada, Spain, for my erasmus period.
While Granada has proven to be a very good choice in terms of its geographical location, multiculturality and social and student life, from an educational point of view it has been quite limiting in terms of courses offered that could match my study profile, Politics and Society. As a matter of fact, the contract that exists today between the UGR and the RUG is limited to the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, as such, ELC students who have followed a Literature or Linguistics profile here in Groningen, can find some good matching courses at the UGR, but for students who study politics like me, the Facultad de Ciencias Políticas would be a better option.
Nevertheless, these past six months I have taken part in the following courses: Creencias, rituales y religiones, Pluralismo religioso y globalización, Política e instituciones en la España moderna and Cultura y mentalidades en la España moderna all of which weighted 6 ECTS.
The first two courses, which were part of the social anthropology department and taught by the same teacher, dealt with religion, beliefs and their impact on modern society. While the first one dealt more with the anthropological background of beliefs and religions and put more focus on the different research studies that have been made by academics from the 19th century onwards, the second course focused more on how religions and beliefs might have affected society, how states have shaped their policies accordingly and what impact they have had on violence and migration, two topics that are widely discussed in everyday life.
The other two courses, which were part of the history department and were also both taught by the same teacher dealt respectively with political and institutional manifestations and cultural manifestations of Spain from 1492 to the current day. Throughout the semester we have had to conduct individual research in order to finalize three projects per course that would be evaluated with in-class presentations.
While the first two courses can be said to be comparable to those taught at the RUG, the other two were very distinct and despite their differences they have surprisingly enabled me to achieve skills on a whole separate academic level that I didn’t possess until now.
I think that overall this educational experience has proven to be quite distinct from what I have been used to during these past two years in Groningen. As a matter of fact, from the registration period to the actual moment that classes started, I noticed how the quality of the information we received as well as the quality of education was relatively lower than what it is at the RUG. This isn’t necessarily something negative or bad, as a matter of fact I feel like I have learned a lot of skills and soft skills that I wouldn’t have learned had I not gone abroad and instead stayed in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, I have had to deal with a lot of confusion regarding my courses in the beginning. As a matter of fact, after having signed up for my courses in june, in july I received an email stating that only two out of the five courses for which I had applied had been
added to my learning agreement and that I would only be able to adjust my schedule once I would have arrived in Granada in September. I spent two months looking up courses that would be good alternatives to the ones that I had picked initially, worried that I wouldn’t be able to since the courses on offer to ELC students with the same profile as mine is extremely limited.
During this process, the mobility office of the RUG and my study coordinator have been extremely helpful in trying to help me find an alternative solution, even trying to change my learning agreement and moving me from the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras to that of Ciencias Políticas. Eventually, everything was resolved with the UGR, not before having sent a lot of unresponded emails to the International Office. As a matter of fact, one of the hardest things in the beginning was not being able to identify who I could come in touch with at the receiving institution since the international office did not know how to help me and my emails did not get replies. Eventually I found that the only way I could get replies to my emails if I emailed the private email of the vice-dean of the UGR whom explained that one of the reasons why most of my courses had been rejected in june was because apparently the RUG had registered me as a student of philology instead of humanities. Apparently, contracts between universities have limited places for each branch, three places for humanities, two for linguistics and one for philology for example, in case they are filled up or there is a mistake any application you send in for courses that do not belong to one of these branches will be rejected and that’s what happened to my application. Once we managed to figure out what the issue was I was told I could apply for all the courses again, however we erasmus students were told that our registration process would be finalized only once all of the local students of the UGR had first applied themselves and the faculty had closed their registration period. This was also very confusing in the beginning because for about a month we went to classes everyday without knowing if at the end of the month there would place for us in that class or not. Throughout the whole process I have kept in touch with the RUG mobility office, my RUG coordinator and the UGR vice-dean and everybody has been very helpful, but my recommendation is to not count too much on the international office at the UGR because most of the times they don’t know how to deal with your personal situation and will end up sending you to the vice-dean anyway. In this regard, something else I have learned about studying in Granada and maybe in Spain is that you have to have a lot of patience, things will not be resolved in one day, sometimes not even in a few weeks, so in some cases it’s a better option to just take it upon yourself to find a solution instead of having to rely on university institutions if you want things to be resolved quickly. In this respect, ESN and fellow erasmus students as well as local students can be very helpful, so asking them for help can be a good solution too.
During my first days in Granada the UGR had organized a few information sessions regarding our stay that touched upon various topics like accomodation and insurance for example. Not only were they very informative, they also helped me clear my mind so I would definitely say it’s highly recommended to be in town before the start of these events. Regarding housing and accommodation, I had managed to find a room before june because my spanish teacher from my first year at the RUG rents out her parents’ apartment to incoming students. Nevertheless, finding accomodation in Granada isn’t as hard as it is in Groningen and my advice would be to start looking around beforehand (facebook pages) in order to find out which area you would want to live in, but to visit multiple rooms once you get to the city in order to have a first personal
look that isn’t just limited to online pictures. Depending on the type of experience you want to live, deciding on which area you want to live in is quite important. As a matter of fact, the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras is quite distant from the city centre and most students who live there will have to walk for more than 30 minutes or take the bus. While I lived closer to the faculty, meaning I only had to walk 15 to 20 minutes, I lived quite far from the city centre and would have to rely on buses and my bike in order to reach my friends at night, which wasn’t always exciting but definitely helped me staying focused on my studying.
Again, even though the education quality isn’t as high as that of the RUG, depending on the courses you take you will still have to do a lot of hard work in order to achieve good results, therefore even if you think that Erasmus is all about travelling and being social it isn’t. I think one of the most important things is to keep a balance of the two things, try to work hard in order to get good grades and then reward yourself by travelling around during your free time, which for improving your spanish is the best you can do. Depending on your teachers, some will be more understanding of your situation and will keep in mind that you’re an erasmus student, that your spanish isn’t as good and they will look out for you, others instead will treat you exactly like any other student. My experience with teachers has been very positive, all of them have taken on the second attitude, treating me like any other student and I have been happy about this.
Depending on your background you might find that teachers are stricter than what you’re used to and that you need keep the teacher-student distance, nevertheless they have all been very willing to help me out in case I had questions or things that needed to be cleared out. With students instead it has been different: while initially I thought that I’d want to bond more with spanish speaking students my age in order to practice my language, eventually I found that it was nearly impossible to enter their group because they have been students in the same university for over three years and not everybody is necessarily willing to bond with you. For me this has meant that I have created my own group, bonding with other erasmus or intercambio students who were also eager to speak spanish and have been happy all the same.
Depending on the type of semester that you want to live the expenses that you will have will differ a lot. Granada is an incredibly cheap city, you can get a room ranging from 150 to 400 depending on the location, the size and whom you rent it from. The average I spent on groceries was 100 a month more or less, but you can easily eat out for five euros and at university for less than two euros. Most of the money I have spent has been for travelling around and social activities: there are two agencies other than ESN that organize trips in Granada and I would recommend you take part in most of them because you only get to live this experience maybe once or twice in your life. I’d say that to make an estimation I would spend 230 on rent, 100 on groceries, 100 on social activities and depending on the month this could be more or less.
Living and studying in Granada has been one of the most incredible experiences in my life and if you were to decide to do your semester in this incredible city I am sure that you would be surprised by how much the city has to offer you.
