On May 8th, I boarded the plane in Newark, NJ and on May 9th I took my first step in France. This marked the
beginning of a once in a lifetime experience. For 2 weeks, myself and 4 Penn
State peers stayed with host families in Nantes, France.
The course I took was called Engineering
Design and took place at Ecole de Nantes. Here, we had 3 PSU professors rotate
between days and about 5 French professors. Yes, a lot of professors but for
the most part they would switch who gave what lessons and who would be
available to help us on what day. This course was designed to give us both an
academic and cultural experience. The academic project we were faced with was
to design and prototype a passive speaker for a smart phone. During the
project, we received lecture on how to evaluate acoustics, use design thinking,
and give an effective presentation. In addition to this, we had a tour of an
Airbus facility, took an electronic bike tour of the city, and went to a bakery
and made croissants and macaroons. For lunch each day, we had the club of
international students take us to lunch. They even planned a beach trip and two
dinners we had together. The course was designed to give us the best academics
and cultural experience.
The host families were a great aspect of
the excellent trip. They provided traditional meals, took us to explore the
city and on nature walks, and played games with us. While everyone naturally
spoke French, they truly attempted to speak English as best they could.
If you are going on a study abroad trip with
other Penn State students, I highly encourage you to plan going early or
staying later after the course with your fellow students to do some exploring.
A couple months before our trip, Penn State organized a meeting so we could
meet the other students going with us. My program had specifically a super
small group of only 5 students, including myself. We made a GroupMe and we were
all interested in spending 4 days exploring Paris. We agreed to book a hostel
where we could share a private room together. Hostels in Europe are very
popular. Ours looked like an extremely nice clean and secured hotel that only
costed us each $45 a night.
How
did I get the chance to use this amazing opportunity offered by Penn State? I
know it can be annoying and overwhelming, but read your emails when you get to
PSU! You will be invited to a million events. While you can’t look into every
event/opportunity, it is important you stay in the loop so you don’t miss out
on some awesome opportunities that you would want to pursue. For example, in
the Fall I saw at the very bottom of the “E-News” (an email chain that gets
sent to every person enrolled in the College of Engineering), there was
advertisements for engineering study abroad information sessions. I attended my
first one having no idea what to expect. Thinking that this email gets sent to
thousands and thousands of people, I imagined there would be a lot of people in
attendance. I walked into a room of 4 students, and 3 administrators. It was
fantastic, I received one on one attention and was able to have a conversation.
I learned here that there was two main types of study abroads—the summer vs
semester trips. I had only been interested in summer trips at the time because
I didn’t think I could live so far from my family for a whole semester.
My next step was to see an advisor. The
general engineering advisors who sit in the Hammond building are amazing. You
can look them up in Starfish and see what their bios say. I saw Sarah said
she’d be happy to talk about study abroads. I sat down with her and she
introduced me to the three trips SEDTAPP was offering that summer---Spain, Singapore,
and France. I always really wanted to go to France so I was immediately
interested in its program
I urge you to reach out to me if you
have any interests or questions about the program I completed. I serve as a
representative and recruiter for the summer engineering abroads. You can always
email me at dbk5264@psu.edu
By: Devyn
Kirban (Envoy Team M)
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