A semester of exchange program in Europe, changed me!
First and the foremost, my professor was right! Studying in Europe is fun! (On some levels, maybe too much fun! I gained 10 pounds after the semester.)
Before I tell you all the fun events, I just want to say, I was changed after that half year experience, in a very positive way!
The reason I call it as positive experience because I’ve became so inspired and motivated ever since. Seeing the world and all different people (outside the school) magnifies my senses of observation and curiosity. I realized how naive and ignorant I was. I thought getting and having my bachelor degree was enough. I apparently had so many things to learn, there are so many many things I didn’t know (Just to give you an example, I was hanging out in a bar at my youth hostel in Brussels, I met this guy. I approached him, he’s the cutest in that bar. We started talking…I learned that he’s from Tel Aviv, Israel. He worked in the youth hostel at the time, to clean the rooms etc, in exchange for the stay. That was his exchange program from Tel Aviv U. He was telling me he’s the “monkey” in Chinese horoscope. I was so shocked he knew about Chinese horoscope. and I had absolutely no idea anything about Israel (Shame on me! I aced history in school, but I couldn’t raise any talking points about his culture.)) After that semester, I really wanted to IMPROVE myself. The only thing I knew how to, was to start doing something, to start creating something. I created a blog documenting my travel, mainly was to review European youth hostels. For people like me at the time, searching economical accommodations with good quality stay. (That was way before Expedia or Airbnb era.) The below attached article/image, is a snapshot of my Europe semester summary in Chinese.
The other thing that I did after my return from Europe, I went on to find a part time job on campus, as a general education professor’s teaching assistant. (I have so much to say about getting a part time job, maybe some other time.) But the gist of it, being professor’s TA, I helped him to prepare his slides for the course of intro to sustainable development. Back in the days, we didn’t have google image that allows you to easily search for graphics to include the image with citation and talk about it in class. The professor needed someone (Me) to scan images of images from journals or any hard copies, and put together a slide deck. So he can later easily add in content to instruct in class. The simple, straightforward tasks that I did as a teaching assistant, paid off? I guess. I thought that was really fun! You find relevant multimedia and assemble materials to give a lecture. That just sounded like what I originally wanted to do, be a computing teacher. The only difference is that, I wouldn’t be qualified to teach younger K-12 kids. I would need the training (more credits, but I wanted to graduate on time, at least about the same time as my peers). So the thought led me to explore, how about teaching college kids? That’s where I learned from the professor I assisted, in order to become him, teaching in college, create your own teaching materials, I need to have a PhD degree. WoW! That was mind blowing discovery for me. Nobody ever told me I can be a professor. I just answered the question in my head (graduate school or software engineering job?) From that moment on, my goal and the sole goal before graduation, was to pursue graduate degrees (Masters and PhD). I later did a software engineering job for about 2 years, in a retro-perspective, that engineering job also confirmed that I really don’t want to be just a programmer however I’m very good at. (Another story, another time). To be continued…
Some fun events that I did during my exchange program (if you read Traditional Chinese, the article below really is a short summary about my semester in Europe):
I went to so many inexpensive but first-class operas and symphony concerts;
I skied at the northern part of Alps in Innsbruck, Austria;
I pretty much trained myself to become an amateur alcohol connoisseur (the legal age to drink at the time to me was 18 as a Taiwanese, I was 19, so yay! Hungarian Tokaji ice wine, Slovakian Burčiak “baby/young wine”, French Moët, Belgium and German beer…Did I mention I got awarded Heineken Scholarship for a MS degree in the Netherlands? I declined the offer eventually, but hey, how cool was that! Oh, not because my knowledge about the beer in getting the scholarship, it’s another story another time);
I walked through the ruins in Pompeii I’ve seen mt. Vesuvio;
I partied with classmates in this castle with different music themes in different floors in the castle by Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech. Ok, that was very dark and it was very long time ago, it may not be a castle, but it felt like a castle to me back then…
I was there the First of January, the year 2002, the very first day Euros started circulating across Europe. I was in this tiny grocery store in Luxumbourg, paying my bread with German euro coins. The lady checked me out at the registry, hung this amazing big smile on her face, she and I both witnessed the progress of European Union just within that split of second. Ok, this didn’t sound particularly fun, but hey, that’s such a historical moment!
There are so many many more…noted that I didn’t mention quite much about what courses I took or anything related to the “studies”.
The experience shapes me.
Source: http://140.115.103.29/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/20.pdf