I was eager to make the best of an exchange semester in France by integrating myself into the Toulousain lifestyle. My exchange college was the Institut national des sciences appliquées de Toulouse (part of the Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées).
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My journey to the American University of Sharjah (AUS) was a complicated one.
During the semester before studying abroad, I took a choir class with a professor who previously taught at AUS and worked with a choir he created in the UAE. I made friends in that exchange, over Skype, who studied at AUS, and who ultimately convinced me to come here.
Coming to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 2012, after graduating from high school in Toronto, Canada, was my first time coming to Europe. I never thought that I would find a place as culturally diverse as Toronto, but I was proven wrong when I came to RCSI.
I found out that I was pregnant during Freshers' Week. My mind often flits to that moment, the two pink lines and my shock and exhilaration. Like many undergraduates, I came to the University of Oxford with a dread of inadequacy. Now, my body was doing something wonderful, driving me towards a point that fear could not prevent.
When I told my friends that I was going to study industrial engineering in Karlsruhe, many asked me why. The city, with a population of 300,000, is unremarkable in comparison with its neighbours Freiburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt, but is the location of one of Europe’s largest research institutions.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has achieved an excellent reputation in science and engineering because of some of the major inventions it has pioneered.
Six months have gone by and I am still surviving in a foreign country, trying to make family, fellow citizens and my sponsor back at home proud. The idea of studying overseas is extremely appealing to many, and the Netherlands is a student-friendly country with an environment that enables you to adapt quickly and remain on your feet, despite the many challenges you may come across.
I had the idea to study in Japan during my second year of high school. Having been drawn to Japanese student life through movies and dramas, I especially liked the idea of school festivals and club activities – most Chinese schools don’t have similar events. So after the final examination in the second year of high school, I started to learn Japanese by myself and shared my idea of studying abroad with my parents.
This will probably sound like a cliché, but studying overseas can broaden your mind, your views on the world and make you feel as though you’ve grown as a person. This is especially so if you live in a country like Japan with its unique culture and society. I have experienced many “culture shock” moments, many of which gave me a sense of admiration for Japanese people.
What is the point of a doctorate in English literature? It’s an easy trap to become deterministic about this question: it is no single thing. To my mind, there are two main reasons to spend four years in speech, word, and thought. One is to do with the field of study itself, and the other with the lifestyle it sustains.
In 2015 I applied for the master's course at the Osaka City University (OCU) Graduate School of Science. I had heard positive stories about OCU from fellow biology students in China who visited OCU on an exchange programme and it has a good reputation for science research (my graduate school even boasts a Nobel Prize laureate).