There are amazing student exchange opportunities for Carleton graduate students.
For example, Master’s student Neil Hauer, a third year student in the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (EURUS) program, went to St.Petersburg, Russia in 2015.
Hauer spent the better part of a year in the country’s cultural center St. Petersburg while attending Saint Petersburg State University (SPSU).\
“The city is stunning – massive cathedrals and monuments everywhere, and the architectural style is very much evocative of a 19th-century great European power. It’s very lively and there’s little cultural shock to be had in the city, aside from the occasional time when you stumble across a recruitment booth looking for volunteers to fight in Donetsk. The only real downside to the experience was Russian bureaucracy, but the extremely friendly and welcoming Russian people more than made up for it. Everyone is shocked at why a Westerner would come to their country, let alone learn Russian, and they’ll all tell you your Russian is fantastic and be very eager to chat with you.”
Hauer says he was surprised by the country’s diversity. “I didn’t really realize how multi-ethnic Russia is until I went there. While I expected it to be noticeably more homogeneous than Canada, I was surprised to find it’s very diverse. Over 100+ ethnic groups exist inside Russia.”
Hauer was at SPSU for about five months, after which he spent another two months travelling and working on his language skills. “I had taken three years of Russian before visiting so I had a good handle on grammar, but I could barely put a spoken sentence together when I got there. Now I’m conversational in the language and can read at a pretty advanced level.”
Hauer says studying abroad gives you a very different experience than you get in the classroom. “I found it helped me understand the realities of Russian daily life and the views of average Russians to a much greater degree.”
He continues: “It can challenge your perceptions – narratives that I had trouble believing were actually commonly accepted – which is something that might not occur to you without experiencing it firsthand.”
Hauer visited the Caucasus Mountains during his grad exchange in Russia
Hauer had previously done an exchange during his undergraduate degree in which he spent a summer in Ankara, Turkey. The experience was a formative one and kicked off his interest in international politics and living abroad.
Hauer intends on going back to Russia and spending a few years working there.
For more information about the student exchange program and other international opportunities, please go to this website.
You can also watch this video about a graduate student who participated in the exchange program a couple of years ago.
Thursday, January 21, 2016 in International, News, Programs
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