For my year abroad I studied at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Duluth is, which is in
the United States. Very far north.
One of the things about Duluth is it's one of the coldest places in the US in the winter.
The snow sort of fell in November and didn't really disappear until April.
I studied in Heidelberg - this old little town on the River Neckar and it's the oldest
university in Germany and one of its most prestigious.
They had a different research perspective compared to Birmingham. Heidelberg took a
more sociolinguistic approach whereas in Birmingham it's more corpus linguistic which is what
we're leading in. So I found it interesting being able to compare their research perspective
with Birmingham's.
Over here in Birmingham, I'm an American Studies and English Language student and so I did,
I had the opportunity to take modules that were sort of related to that but maybe offering
something slightly different as well.
In Heidelberg I studied English Studies and I did modules such as pragmatics, sociolinguistic
research methods.
I did a course on American Indian novels which was run by a Ojibwe professor - quite a prominent
author in the region and so that was a really interesting course to take that is not something
that could be offered really in the UK.
I studied a lot of literature modules as well, for example American humour. and that dealt
with racist humour, misogynistic humour and the guy in this field he'd written a lot of
books on it so I trusted what he said.
It was fun watching the sports as well, they take that whole thing very seriously over
there. So there's a lot of even local people with no affiliation to the university take
a lot of pride in the Duluth bulldogs and they were in fact the champions in the ice
hockey last year.
My biggest advice for those considering studying year abroad would be to speak with the locals,
go to all the places where local people would go.
Be open-minded I would say. You don't quite know how your year's going to pan out.
People might be quite hospitable and invite you to places and it's quite nice to just
see where it takes you.
Do things that you wouldn’t do in your home university. I started a YouTube channel and
I learned how to edit and do some graphic designs.
For fall break we flew to Washington DC.
It's a fascinating city to visit. With all the monuments and just to be able to walk
past the White House.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to travel every weekend because Heidelberg's in mainland
Europe and so it was quite well-connected to different places so I used to take the
flex bus to Prague, Krakow, Vienna and I went to even Oktoberfest which was so fun.
In terms of the cost, it was more affordable than I thought it would be. I was quite nervous
beforehand and obviously I can't speak for everyone but I would say do some research
and don't initially be put off by that just out of hand because there is a lot of support
there that you might not think is there.
One of the biggest myths when it comes to studying in Germany is that you have to learn,
you have to be able to speak German to study there but I studied English in Germany and
it was fine and I had only A1 level German which is beginners - so I could say hallo,
alles gut.
I took a few German lessons whilst I was there but I still got along fine - I was able to
interact with local people but I would highly recommend doing a language course because
it's just I think it's courteous to learn the language in the country that you are in.