So this fall im apparently going to be an exchange student in Utrecht, the netherlands (it was a 'all my friends are applying so i might as well do it too' kind of thing) unless I fuck something up which might still happen.

I'm getting really excited about it though, probably a great experience and it will look great at my resumé. Will distinguish me from all the bazillion other business economic-people.

also dutch people what kind of town is utrecht? I read some stories from previous exchange students and they liked it, good university, good parties, but crappy rooms.

So yeah what are your opinions about studying abroad?

because i tried to go to australia but they refused to give me the spot.

so many people go places they know absolutely nothing about and I don't get it. idk if this applies to you, and I don't know how much essiann knew about India before she moved there, but she's someone who will get something out of the experience no matter what and it was all pertinent to her major anyway

like what will you get out of doing business school in the netherlands that you couldn't get elsewhere? it sounds like you're studying abroad just for the heck of it, and as a poor student with $0 that pisses me off!! I study foreign countries and cultures in my free time but I'm not going to be able to travel anywhere for years

regardless, if you have a free opportunity to study abroad and got nothing at stake you should definitely go.

yeah but that's anywhere, and netherlands isn't even that different from america. it'd be really easy to live as an american there, especially if all your american friends were there with you and you had no intererest in the history or culture besides which parties are the most fun

by which I mean it's a huge opportunity, don't make ducks and drakes of it or you'll be hitting yourself later.

exchange is the best fucking thing you can do

I've been hanging with exchange students at my uni since 2008.
Awesome stuff, great results.

so many people go places they know absolutely nothing about and I don't get it. idk if this applies to you, and I don't know how much essiann knew about India before she moved there, but she's someone who will get something out of the experience no matter what and it was all pertinent to her major anyway

like what will you get out of doing business school in the netherlands that you couldn't get elsewhere? it sounds like you're studying abroad just for the heck of it, and as a poor student with $0 that pisses me off!! I study foreign countries and cultures in my free time but I'm not going to be able to travel anywhere for years

regardless, if you have a free opportunity to study abroad and got nothing at stake you should definitely go.

well i live in communist sweden so the state takes care of me, they grant me a higher student loan during an exchange term. also i most probably will learn the same stuff as i could anywhere but if you want the great jobs here in sweden you almost have to study abroad. just studying at university-level isn't enough to stand out in sweden.

so many people go places they know absolutely nothing about and I don't get it. idk if this applies to you, and I don't know how much essiann knew about India before she moved there, but she's someone who will get something out of the experience no matter what and it was all pertinent to her major anyway

idk man i think you are almost guaranteed to get SOMETHING out of studying abroad no matter where you go and no matter how much you knew about the place.  i mean, just seeing a little of the world is something!!!  who cares if you go there and do the stuff you'd do normally wherever you came from, you'd have to be actively trying to not get anything out of it.

on top of that, why do you have to know anything about a place before going?  isn't that place going to be the best place to learn it?????

typical greaseballs...

idk man i think you are almost guaranteed to get SOMETHING out of studying abroad no matter where you go and no matter how much you knew about the place.  i mean, just seeing a little of the world is something!!!  who cares if you go there and do the stuff you'd do normally wherever you came from, you'd have to be actively trying to not get anything out of it.

on top of that, why do you have to know anything about a place before going?  isn't that place going to be the best place to learn it?????

it's just kinda absurd to me, picking which country to study in based solely on how the name sounds to you. plus this is something people dream about, so being like welp who ever gave a shit about this country before, how are the parties?? is sort of a gross privileged white person thing to do.

believe me I do understand the fun in traveling to an unknown land and trying to carve out an existence there, but I think you need to be a certain kind of person to be able to do that and really get something out of it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has spoken with huge dumbos coming back from abroad who only could talk about how gross the food was, how hot/ugly the chicks were, and how fucken awesome this alcoholic drink was while showing pictures of himself standing in front of major tourist destinations

this guy said he's from sweden tho so a lot of what I said doesn't really apply

so temporarily living in another country isn't a valuable learning experience? because everybody does it just for the parties anyway?

you're making a pretty broad generalization there. it's very important to learn about other cultures and to deal with people who think differently than you do. studying abroad is just one of many ways to do that. this isn't some wild, random thing people do just because they want to go on a free vacation.

pratsy se engles? bok tol-yak angliskei? you're not really responding to anything I've posted. I'm not talking about studying abroad in general when I'm pointing out how it's often wasted. as I said earlier, it's really an invaluable experience if you have the opportunity and you do it right. but people do waste the opportunity, too, and it's really a shame because there is so much you can get out of it and it's not something everyone gets to do. sure these people probably get something of value out of their experience, but they could have done so much more. idk how it works in sweden but over here it's better to leave the slot open to someone else who really wants it (like a hypothetical LA student who could do some good research on dutch gardens??) if you're just going over there to party and smoke weed

de reden waarom ik dit tegen je zeg is omdat je eigenlijk alleen maar zit te zeuren over misbruik van studiemogelijkheden in het buitenland. je doet alsof vrijwel iedereen, en mogelijk ook Vesper, het enkel doet omdat ze lekker in het buitenland kunnen feesten en wiet kunnen roken terwijl jijzelf, een student die het uiteraard veel meer verdiend, gepasseerd wordt. en ja, dat is een vrij generaliserende en ongeprovoceerde opmerking.

Vesper is misschien niet al te enthousiast over het feit dat hij naar Nederland komt, maar je hebt geen idee wat voor iemand hij is en wat hij precies gaat doen als hij hier aankomt. beurzen om naar het buitenland te gaan worden echt niet zomaar aan iedereen uitgegeven. dus hou je commentaar nog maar even voor je voordat je je beklag maakt over het feit dat hij andermans' kansen verspilt.

whoa I have no idea what this means.

double whoa! harsh much? I thought it was joke highlighting how neither of us has a concrete idea what the other is trying to say but we still disagree about something abstract and we might as well be posting in different languages osuruk geğirmek bok. btw I haven't been specifically talking about vesper, I've acknowledged a lot of what I've said probably doesn't apply to students from sweden. I have no idea, but I do know that intra-europe travel is relatively cheap, the state probably pays for it and the guy already has a second language so