Hello Everyone :)
After I talked to
you last week about who I am, what this blog is all about and why I decided on
a blog, I today want to tell you how I stumbled upon this opportunity and
suddenly had landed a semester abroad. This might sound weird to you:
"stumbled" & "suddenly"; But that's really how it was.
Let me explain!
In the middle of February
when classes had finished, one of my profs wrote an email via the course
directory telling us that there were open slots for a four month internship at
the University School in Tulsa. This School is a private school on the campus
of the University of Tulsa (TU) for especially gifted children for age 3 to 8th
grade. I was super excited! Four months, from the end of August to December? An
internship at an American school? This was exactly what I dreamed of when I
imagined the perfect semester abroad. Further she wrote in her email that we
should contact another Prof at our university if we were interested. I immediately
emailed him. After some forth and back I had little more information that I had
before. Now I knew that this would be the first round of this program. I was
happy to hear though that said prof wanted to support my application for the
program. He sent me to Ms Kurz of our International Office.
For everyone from the
University of Siegen who is interested in spending a semester abroad at our
partner university, you should definitely go see Ms Kurz. She is really nice
and will be able to explain all the details about applying etc. You can find
her information on our website. Her office is in the SSC. Be sure though to
come prepared with all the questions you want to ask her. I personally was so
excited about everything and Ms Kurz so fast paced that I forgot to ask her
some questions I should have asked. Also: She isn't really big in answering a
lot of emails. The best thing is to go and see her in person.
After my meeting
with Ms Kurz I had to apply online via a platform from the University of
Siegen. Once you apply online and hand in your printed out application, you
have to wait and see. I actually don't know how it all works in other cases but
in my case there weren't a lot of other students applying for this program and
since the prof supported me it was basically a done deal. In any case the
university moves on by nominating people for the different programs and sending
these nominations to Tulsa. So got my nomination email and didn't really know
what to do next. So I waited. There wasn't really a lot I could do. At this
point I still only knew that I applied for a four month program in Tulsa where
I could intern at the University School.
Finally I received
an email from Tulsa! Turns out I needed to apply again but this time at TU.
Only that the deadline was only two weeks ahead on May 1st and there were Easter
Holidays in between. I hustled to get everything I needed for the application
but that was seriously not possible in this time frame. The trickiest part was
the "signature verification form" which needed to be send by mail and
the "financial resources" document which needed to be signed and
stamped by a bank.
You can imagine
that I was slightly panicking especially since the application website kept
reminding me that I wouldn't be able to change anything in my application after
the due date. I had sent my signature verification form more than a week ago
but it didn't show up in my application. What to do? So I simply called. I was
more than relieved to hear that the due date would be pushed to the end of the
moth since the nominations for Fall Term came in rather late.
During the last
three weeks I emailed with a very nice lady from Tulsa who was able to give me
some more information on ... well... EVERYTHING! I will actually be an exchange
student at TU and I'll be participating in a Student Teacher Course. Part of
this course is co-teaching at one (or if I wish more schools) and also a weekly
seminar where all student teachers exchange their experiences. Thanks to the
partnership of the University of Siegen and TU I don't have to pay tuition but
I will need to pay for housing which is app. 3000 $ according to the TU
website. She also said that it is definate that I can come to Tulsa as long as I hand in all the information required and got my visa.
And that's where I am now!
Thank you for reading this super longe post ;)
Jenny Sch.
