{"id":8889,"date":"2019-07-24T16:34:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T16:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/?p=8889"},"modified":"2019-09-23T14:54:34","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T14:54:34","slug":"my-study-abroad-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/my-study-abroad-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"My Study Abroad Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I genuinely can\u2019t believe I\u2019m writing this because it means\nthat my semester abroad in Adelaide, Australia is coming to an end. In just 2\ndays\u2019 time I will be making the journey back to the UK after a fantastic five\nmonths down under. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the second semester of my second year studying journalism and communications, I decided to undertake an international exchange and do a part of my degree in another university. Being fully supported by the Global Opportunities team here in Cardiff, I set off in February to begin my adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, it has been one of the most incredible experiences\nof my life where I have not only excelled academically but have met some great\npeople and of course, done some travelling in between. It wasn\u2019t an easy ride\nand there were definitely many challenges that I faced but it has all been massively\nbeneficial and allowed for huge personal growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the start, I struggled slightly with the pressures of being in Australia as everyone expects you to have the time of your life and I felt worried that this might not be the case. However, it definitely was! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When you go abroad your host uni will have an\ninternational\/exchange student network which helps you to make friends with\nother people going through the same things. Pretty much all the friends I made\nabroad were international students from just about everywhere. I guess this is\none of the benefits of doing an exchange \u2013 I can now get free accommodation with\nmy friends all over the world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The university side of things (the main bit I suppose) was incredible and consisted of me doing four modules instead of the usual three a semester which was a little different but definitely manageable. The biggest differences in the unis was the type of work that I was doing. Whilst in Cardiff pretty much all my work is academic, in Australia I found myself doing very hands on, practical work which meant I gained many transferable skills. Going abroad allowed me to experience an entirely different university and take modules in things that I otherwise wouldn\u2019t be able to do in Cardiff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Aside from this, during my time off uni in the Easter holidays and after completing all my work at the end of the semester, I did a bit of travelling around Australia. The country is huge to say the least and I didn\u2019t even know that it is bigger than the whole of Europe! Some of the places I went were to include Sydney, Melbourne and Kangaroo Island. I also did a road trip along the Great Ocean Road and backpacked the entire East Coast. I even got to dive the Great Barrier Reef and sail through the Whitsundays! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So to sum it up my sense of independence has never been greater and overall I just feel so proud of myself that I have done it all by myself. It is an experience that I will treasure for the rest of my life for sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you would like to check out the global opportunities on offer at Cardiff for each course or just in general follow this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have absolutely any questions don\u2019t hesitate to leave\na comment below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I genuinely can\u2019t believe I\u2019m writing this because it means that my semester abroad in Adelaide, Australia is coming to an end. In just 2 days\u2019 time I will be […]","protected":false},"author":1499,"featured_media":8890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[693,742,10,20],"tags":[613,813,596],"class_list":["post-8889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardiff-university-experiences","category-global-opportunities","category-living-away-from-home","category-travelling","tag-australia","tag-exchange-student","tag-study-abroad"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9945,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889\/revisions\/9945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}