Erasmus personal report Student: Wanda De Rosa
Home University: University of Groningen Host University: University of Malta Exchange program: Linguistics Email: w.de.rosa@student.rug.nl
Courses
DGA1007 Introduction to Visual Narrative - cr. 2
The name and the description, of course, were misleading as I had no idea that the course would have been focused on illustration. From the course’s description, I understood that it would have provided an outline of visual narrative forms, including comics, videos, films, etc. The course instead focused entirely on illustration, also complemented by a special class on the history of the printing methods. Despite I enjoyed the lecturer’s passion for the topic, I regret to say that I did not find this course particularly useful for my academic career.
DGA1013 Comparative Approaches to Art, Design and Visual Culture - cr. 4
This course provided a grounding interdisciplinary perspective on the arts. This was a course that I had to choose to reach the number of credits necessary. Therefore, I was aware that it might have been too basic for a third-year art student like myself. Despite my initial concerns, I enjoyed going through a basic overview. In addition to the classes, the lecturer provided us online access to some fundamental readings, I had already studied only a couple of them before, so it was an interesting study for me as well.
LIN1024 Hands-on Language - cr. 4
The course provided an overview of the competences to be acquired when studying linguistic. Each area was approached each week by a different professional. However, despite the course could have been dispersive, rather than a written essay or exam, the course required to fulfill four-unit tasks concerning some analytical methods demonstrated in class by the lecturers. I enjoyed the very practical approach to the course. As a student approaching linguistic for the first time, it made me visualise how a linguistic investigation should unfold, giving me beginner tools to start carrying it myself.
LIN1032 Formal Foundations for Linguistics - cr. 4
The course was divided into two parts carried out by different lecturers. It focused on giving an insightful perspective on the key logic behind linguistic. Despite my lack of background on the subject, I found the course interesting and stimulating.
LIN1065 Academic Speaking in English (Linguistics) - cr.2
The course was well structured and was carried out with minimal disadvantages despite the issues in scheduling (which affected to different degrees all the linguistics courses) and the limited weekly classes’ duration of only one hour. The classes that I attended had very few students coming from different backgrounds and experiences. Unfortunately, this did not create a stimulating learning environment, I was still able to gather useful tips from the lecturer on how to improve my skills.
LIN1170 Morphology - cr.2
The course provided a very basic introductory approach to one of the fundamentals for the study of linguistics. I am fully satisfied with the beginner level and the teaching methods, my only remark being that at times the classes were a little rushed as the lecturer had to fit within one hour class per week.
LIN2034 Conversation Analysis - cr.4
The course and the subject were very new and interesting to me, still, it was rather unorganised. I chose this course out of curiosity for the subject and I am glad to say that the lecturer was very proficient in the field. However, due to some internal faculty issues, I started following the course after a series of scheduling issues, which—I then found out—did not affect only me. The course suffered from both the lecturer’s and the other students’ scheduling problems. Furthermore, the lecturer did not manage to communicate efficiently the course’s objectives and tasks, causing a few important misunderstandings. Some of the reading materials were not of easy understanding for a newbie, the newness of the area of study also did not make an academic approach to the subject any easy. Thankfully, the lecturer was available to help us overcome any issues both on the didactic and the organisation. Overall, I am happy to have approached this subject for the first time despite some logistic misunderstandings which troubled my experience of the course.
MCS2020 Video production 1- cr. 4
This course was a real disappointment. As a film student, I was looking forward to gathering practical experience in the field. However, despite being finalised to the production of a video project, the course was not structured as a practical course. While the classes revolved around snippets from the history of cinema and editing, this knowledge— old and basic info for me as a third-year student—turned useless in the moment of the production. Despite hoping to get to know the filming equipment by hands-on tutorials, these never occurred and my knowledge on how to use them remained limited. A couple of lecturers were very helpful in providing advice, yet oftentimes they were contradicting each other when providing vital info on the deadlines, leaving us students very confused with different piecemeal info. While the final project required a lot of effort and time (from someone like myself with no prior experience) the course added neither to my technical nor to my antecedent theoretical knowledge.
MCS3200 Scripting Video- cr. 4
In my experience in Malta, this was the most interesting course. The lecturer was a professional in the field who was eager to share her experience with us, students. Unfortunately, not all students were equally receptive - which also explains why the lecturer had to be strict - but I share as one o the students who tried to make the most from the classes, that the lecturer’s input and guidance was really helpful not only to understand the topic but to share a love for the profession. For me, coming from a film and criticism background, this course genuinely opened a new perspective on my field of study that I had not considered before.
Experience
Quality of education
Overall, in my experience, I have to say that the quality of education at the University of Malta is lower compared to that at the University of Groningen. I was able to shape this opinion based on several issues like the miscommunications between the lecturers within the same course, unclear schedules and assignment details also poorly communicated, facilities (especially for the media program) not fully working or available to students. By saying this I do not doubt that all the lecturers are valid professionals in their fields, but their courses, and their teachings, suffer immensely from general disorganisation.
Reception and accommodation
The general poor organisation affected the exchange office as well. While the staff was very
available, due to the number of requests and the lack of personnel, they would rarely reply to emails which meant that I was a habitual visitor of the exchange office to get the necessary validation for all the documents, occasionally skipping mandatory classes for this as the office was only open for a few hours in the morning. On more than one occasion I also received conflicting information from the exchange office and the faculties’ coordinators regarding the documentation or the procedure I should follow. For the first two months, I was very confused, my courses’ enrolment was pending on approval until November which entailed that my courses and classes during that time were subject to several changes.
The University of Malta provides student accommodation. Because I received confirmation of my acceptance quite late in July, I enquired for the university residence accommodation, after gathering some information I paid for a refundable deposit after receiving my acceptance letter. However, immediately paying for the refundable deposit I realized that the accommodation was not in a convenient location (far from the university campus, only reachable through university shuttles/
busses available until 6 p.m). Because I am used to studying at the university library or study areas, I foresaw a problem in the distance and after careful thinking, I decided to look for another housing
solution. I applied for the refund of the deposit the same day in which I received confirmation that the payment had been received (two days after I made the payment). However, my refund request was denied, because apparently, I was already off the refunding deadline which was the day before.
The issue is that in my previous inquiries about the housing before paying the deposit, none of the staff mentioned this deadline to me which on the website was only stated in the English version that I was not able to access. Naturally, I complained, I provided proofs for the fact that I could not see this condition anywhere from my devices, I even asked for advice from my home university, but the university residence staff was unmovable, I did not receive the deposit back. After this unbelievable experience, I carefully checked my savings and ended up not accepting the accommodation at the residence, first because of the reason aforementioned, second because I did not trust the
management after how badly they dealt with my issue, therefore I did not feel safe in entrusting my following six months to that kind of management. It turned out to be the most suitable decision for me as I found a family accommodation 15 minutes walk from the campus and I did end up spending most of my nights studying in the university areas. This solution was not ideal either, it was a small and cold room in an unfriendly family of two with a particularly stern landlady, it made me
overstressed and anxious about every move I made, but I still made it work because of its closeness to the campus.
Expenses
Malta is an expensive country and because of my issues with the accommodation, I did end up spending more of my expected accommodation budget (300 deposit, 500 new accommodation monthly rent + 500 deposit). After learning my way around the least I could spend in a month for living expenses was 300 euros.
General comments
Overall I fell in love with the country’s Mediterranean beauty and its blooming artistic scene. I enjoyed the independent cinemas, the free screenings organised during several small cinema festivals, the numerous English spoken theatre plays, the local festivals through which to gain bundle access to museums and exhibitions. Unfortunately, I could not experience the cultural life of the country for long, because I had to deal with all the issues described above along with the many courses I had to follow to reach the number of credits required. I am a careful student, I considered my studies as my priority to reach the goal of graduating within the year. Had I not been close to graduation I would have probably experienced both the uni life and the country’s culture in a more relaxed way. In conclusion, I have many regrets regarding this experience which I did not enjoy as much as I hoped I would. Overall, it was a welcomed change of pace which I needed through my university path, although it was still spoiled by several difficulties which prevented me from experiencing it to the fullest.
