Studying in the Netherlands as an international student

Imagine walking along the canals in the Netherlands, the water shimmering in the sunlight and purple and yellow flowers blooming around you. There’s a windmill in the distance and the smell of something sweet in the air. You almost forget that you’ve slept for only three hours on the plane, that you have two suitcases bumping along behind you and that, with your spotty signal, you’re pretty sure Google Maps has lost you.

This is how I started my study abroad journey in the Netherlands. Studying abroad was definitely an adventure. As an American on exchange in the Netherlands, I was promised a new school system, a new country and a new way of life – and I couldn’t wait.

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The adventure didn’t start when I got on the plane. It didn’t start when I figured out how in the world to buy a train ticket abroad. It actually started the previous semester, when I decided that I wanted to spend a semester at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).

For me, choosing an exchange university was more a process of elimination than anything else. I was participating in a summer research project in Switzerland and needed to attend training sessions once a month, so I wanted to be somewhere close.

That meant studying in Europe. I met with my school’s semester exchange adviser, and she presented me with my options. As an aerospace engineering major, I had only some four schools to pick between. I wanted to be in mainland Europe for easy travel, and my courses needed to be in English, so I ended up at TU Delft.

Thankfully, TU Delft handles visa applications for its students. All I had to do was secure housing, which I did on the Dutch DUWO site, and submit a payment to TU Delft to show that I had sufficient funds to live there for six months. The university would refund me the money once I arrived. After that, it was just a plane and a train and a very chaotic trek through town with my suitcases.

When I moved into my apartment, I was immediately greeted by my five new housemates. They came from all over the world. I was surprised to see that our apartment housed male and female students, which I learned is much more normal in Europe than it is in the US.

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One of the hardest adjustments for me was the school system. Rather than having weekly homework assignments and multiple mid-term exams, TU Delft courses have one final exam worth the entire course grade. This was both incredibly freeing and somewhat stressful – I’d never had an exam matter so much before, and I’d always been used to having homework to guide my studying.

I was taking a few courses without the proper prerequisites, and combined with the other stresses, I ended up failing an exam and had to retake it during the next quarter. I was ashamed to have failed, but I learned that this was normal at TU Delft. I wasn’t stupid, just adjusting to a new educational system. It was a much healthier, grace-filled attitude to failure than I’d ever encountered at my home university, and although it was challenging, I’m thankful to have learned that lesson.

This schedule also gave me the flexibility to learn how to study on my own, and I had more free time than I had ever enjoyed back home. My friends and I took advantage of this, going on evening bike rides around the lake, grabbing €1 beers at the university’s student bars, and shopping at the biweekly farmer’s markets in the centre of town.

I learned that one of the best things I could do was just say “yes” – to catch a tram to the beach, take a weekend trip to Belgium, meet a new friend for coffee, or chat in the kitchen for hours with my roommates. I was used to a culture of hurry, but now, on exchange, I began to take my time.

I made friends from all over the world. I got to travel, meeting up with other friends on exchange or taking trips with my newfound friend group from TU Delft. One of my favourites was a trip that my flatmates and I took to Ireland— we road-tripped around the country for a week, staying at my friends’ houses with their families.

Studying abroad is an adventure, and adventures can be challenging. But through all the homesickness, confusion over the school system, and my constant confusion with Google Maps suddenly being in kilometres, I gained both an independence and an interdependence like I’d never known.

Independence in that I was thousands of miles from the only places I’d ever lived, and that my ordinary friend group and support system was seven hours behind me. Interdependence in that I came to realise how connected the world was. I made new friendships and found a new support system. I saw my own culture and country in a new light. I learned parts of my personality that are inseparable from the culture I grew up in, and I adopted new thoughts and habits from the culture I now inhabited.

My semester exchange was, by far, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.