How I found the rabbit hole and fell through it

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.