Studying in Aberystwyth

It was pretty much a year ago that I started off into the adventure “studying a term abroad at Aberystwyth University”, which is one of the partner universities of the Heinrich-Heine-University.  And it was an adventure indeed! I did not only learn a lot of new things and meet a lot of new people, but it was also the very first time that I lived on my own – sharing a flat with seven other international students – and the very first time that I lived in a town other than my home town and in a country other than my home country, although Wales was not unfamiliar to me as we spent almost all of our summer holidays in the UK, visiting my family, who live not far from the Welsh border.

I would say that spending a term abroad is an experience well worth making! Living together with so many international students was very special as we shared and exchanged a lot – especially while having our international dinners together in our kitchen. This experience is quite unique and I think it is something inherent to being an international student. However, it was not only the international students that made these few months so special, but also meeting the students in my classes who had already spend a few years living in Aberystwyth and thus knew the place really well, so they were able to show me around. Aberystwyth is a really welcoming place and the people who live there do a lot to create this welcoming atmosphere. This regards not only the shops in town, like the Bookshop by the Sea that is owned by one of my classmates and that makes you feel like coming home, but also the university and the breathtaking landscape. Aber – as it is affectionately called by the locals – has a lot to offer with it being a small seaside town, the mountains surrounding it and the medieval castle ruins you can explore. The landscape creates a very calming atmosphere and this is also achieved through the reassurance that you can just go out and enjoy the nature if you feel the need to. Moreover, the university itself has a lot to offer as well. I think, getting to know a new university is something you can only benefit from – you get a lot of new input through meeting new fellow students, being taught by new lecturers and being able to take classes you would not have been able to take at home.

For me these classes were: Medieval Dreams & Marvels, Romantic Radical Cultures, and the Introduction to Modern Irish Language. Medieval Dreams & Marvels is probably the seminar we all would have chosen as students of medieval literature and it was definitely very interesting as I had not discussed this genre in depth before and as we engaged with a lot of texts that I had not encountered before. Thus, I can really recommend this seminar as I was able to broaden my medieval literature horizon through it.

Romantic Radical Cultures is a choice that requires a bit of an explanation, I guess. Medieval Dreams & Marvels was the only medieval literature seminar, so I had to choose from the other literary eras for my second seminar and I knew that a lot of the Romantic poets looked at medieval texts seeking for inspiration, thus it was the most obvious choice and it was a very enriching experience. It made me come out of my comfort zone to some extent and I was also able to contribute knowledge my fellow students did not have, coming from a medieval background. You can even read about the outcome of a medievalist being thrown into a Romantic poetry seminar in another blog post of mine, where I talk about the assignment I had to do for this course. 

Deciding to learn Irish  (or Gaeilge) had personal as well as academic reasons: My great-grandfather was born in Ireland, so I always had an interest in the language – this is also the reason why I did not choose to learn Welsh (apart from the fact that learning Welsh is even more difficult) – and Irish is a language not many people know, thus it makes you unique and quite interesting for other universities if you want to further pursue an academic career, which is what I am aiming at. This could help me in pursuing my dream.

All of that leads me back to my idea of describing the experience of studying abroad as an adventure, because I think that it leads to personal and academic growth and in the end this is what adventures are all about.

Goodbye for now! – or as they would say in Irish: Slán go fóill!