Experience report

Julian K., Poznań University of Economics, Posen, Polen 

After I have started my studies in Germany, I always thought that I would like to Poland for some time. I thought it will give me a good experience about how studies are arranged in different countries and such knowledge would help me to adapt to different situations in the future. Moreover, I wanted to expand my Polish language knowledge in case of words specific to certain sectors like management, marketing, human resources, etc.

I have chosen Poznań University of Economics after making some research about my possible destination. The university is very high rated in economic sector in the country and the city is a big metropolic that I wanted to live in as-well. During the whole administrative process I had some difficulties, but I always received a lot of great support from both, my home university and the destination university.
I got to Poland in the middle of february, since my studies were to start at 24.02.2020 and I wanted to settle in the apartment and prepare for the semester. I have managed to find a very decent private accommodation, located about 15 minutes from the university with public transport. Of course the knowledge about polish language helped me a lot throughout the whole period.
Regarding to studies itself, everything was starting really smooth. I had to change some subjects because of overlaps in the plan, but I still was very happy with the classes I have attended.
The courses I have attended:
-Business negotiations
-Change management
-International public relations
-International strategic business analysis
-Leadership in organisations
-Managerial decisions
-Innovation management
-International marketing
-Socio-economic challenges in Europe
-Brand management
All the courses were leaded great by all the professors and I really had a great time studying those. Of course shortly after the semester started the pandemics of COVID-19 begun, changing my whole plan for the exchange programme. I was only able to go to the university for a month and after that it was closed and all the classes were moved to online studies.

However, I have still managed to meet a lot of new and people from different countries, which was also one of my goals for that semester. Everyone was really nice and open-minded so it was fun to exchange ideas for example during group work for some classes, since we all had different points of view to specific topics and it was really entertaining to discuss those matters.
It is hard to me to write more about the “normal semester”, since my experience was very much different to what other students going for an erasmus are used to.

Although, I would like to say that the university and the professors really did great job switching to online classes. It went really smooth even though no one was prepared for that situation. Everyone was really helpful and I have not experience any difficulties while studying from home.

Poznań is a really great city and I will surely would like to come back here in the future.
For next erasmus exchange students, I would recommend to live near the university and to take part in all the activities. There will be a lot option to travel, experience new things, meet new people and have fun with them. But obviously do not forget about the learning process.