Ready, Set, Go...!

The last few weeks have gone by so quick! After finishing my last exams all I seem to be doing is rushing from one place to the next. I have spent some time in my hometown saying goodbye to everyone there and the week after I went on holiday to England with my dad and granny. I desperately needed that holiday!

Although you keep telling yourself: “one day, I will just book a flight and go!”, well, you can buy your tickets and all but you can´t just go. There is just too much to organise and plan! Even I wouldn´t have thought it would take me so long to get everything in order.

On my last big adventure to Tanzania I was still living at home. Therefore, I did not have to worry about renting out my room, I had time to work all summer long to save some money and most important I had my mum helping me getting prepared.

Now that I have moved out and grown up I have to do everything on my own. And it feels a little scary sometimes, especially when it comes to all these big decisions I am facing. It is like preparing for a big event. I have a deadline: 3rd September. That is the date I will be leaving for Canada and before that I need to:

• find someone to rent my room

• get a new credit card (since mine got lost in the African mailing system and mysteriously was sent back month after I got back home)

• quit my job and work off all the hours that are left

• hand in the keys for work

• quit the sports club

• apply for housing in Canada

• enroll in courses (and check whether they match the courses at my home university)

• book flights

• apply for visa

• get an international driving licence (just in case)

• figure out financing (maybe take on another job during the summer months or apply for scholarships and all sorts including a million forms to fill out)

• and many more things...

It may sound simple to just work off this list but of course things do not work out the way they do. For example: you think you just phone up the bank to get a new credit card? Well, no that would be too easy. After the bank simply didn´t process my request properly and I phoned them up again they sent me 4 credit cards! What am I supposed to do with that many credit cards?! Yet again I had to phone them up to try and find out which one would actually work.

What is even worse is filling out all these forms that are being thrown at you. There is a financing system in Germany called “Bafög” where students can apply to get a loan by the government to help them get through university. Not only had I to contact a certain office in “Thüringen” which processes all applications from students going on an exchange to Canada but I had to spend hours trying to get all the paperwork together.

To top it all off, two weeks before my departure my computer decided that it was not willing to do any more work for me and that I would better hurry to get a replacement.

I could go on and on about all the struggles this whole “going abroad thing” includes but I would probably bore you all to death.

Thankfully things were paying off, though. First, I got an email telling me that I was offered a room in the student houses. What a relief that was! After my mum was getting quite nervous and kept telling me to make other arrangements (which of course I hadn´t) this was really good news!

I also had a surprising mail from a scholarship program ran by my university for exchange programs. A while ago I applied (including me rushing around to collect performance records and trying to write down a convincing motivation letter). Now I opened my inbox to find that I was granted a scholarship which would provide a monthly funding.

Finally, after months of sending paperwork backwards and forwards I got a letter that my application for “Bafög” had been processed and that I would get a monthly payment from them, too. Hooorraaay!!!

So eventually all the hard work does pay off, even if it seems so much work to start with. And it is worth the extra work of applying for scholarships. All you need is a little bit of luck and believing in your abilities.

As I said before, it feels like as if you are preparing for a big event and trying to think of everything. You are hoping and praying everything goes right. And when things are starting to go the way you want them to, it takes of all the weight of your shoulders! Especially that scholarship meant a lot for me. It might sound stupid but it feels like a huge privilege to be chosen to receive that scholarship. It is no secret that I always wanted to go abroad. But now I even got the support and acknowledgement in doing so by my own university.