Motivation
I think just the idea of going overseas and living europe for 6 months was an appealing one to me. I wanted to figure out how I would cope living alone in a completely new environment. Experiencing different cultures and languages was another factor. Finally, I wanted to get an education from another university to see how their teaching methods differed to UQ.
Personal Development
I know it sounds cliche but definitely the biggest one is the people and friends that you meet. Spending half a year in Europe, you also have lots of time to explore basically any countries you want. I think I got a lot better and socialising and talking to people, which I think is because you are kind of forced to meet new people while on exchange. I also felt that I became a lot more appreciative of Brisbane as well, and the friends I have over here as well.
Academic Development
The education system in Maastricht is very different to UQ, specifically the PBL system. This means that the tutorial groups are small (~15 people) and every lesson a group of 2-3 is presenting the course content. This means that across your two 7-week courses, you will have at least 2 presentations for each. As opposed to UQ where I felt I had a lot of work around exam season, the workload in my courses in Maastricht seemed more spread out (which has its own pros and cons). At the start it was definitely hard to present, but having group mates helped. Towards the end, I became a lot more confident in making slide packs and presenting to my tutorial groups.
Professional Development
By far the biggest one was my presentation skills. Especially within the Business environment, I think being able to deliver a fantastic presentation is a very good skill to have. The more niche courses I took (Neuroeconomics & History of Economic Thought) also gave me a new persepective on content I had already learnt at UQ. Finally, I think I became a lot better at working in groups. Almost every assessment item there was in a group, which meant you were forced to get along and divide the work in a smart way.
Funding
Accomodation: ~8 000
Flights: ~ 3 000
Everything else: ~ 15-25 000
In my experience, the prices in the Netherlands were roughly the same as in Brisbane. Therefore, I would say looking at your expenses in Brisbane would be a good baseline to start your budget. Obviously on exchange, people tend to spend way more as you will be travelling a lot and eating out more and whatnot. A lot of people also like to do trips before/ after their exchange so there is additional costs there as well. Ultimately, depending on how lavishly you choose to spend your time there, the spending can vary greatly. I would recommend to track expenses for the first month to get a gauge on if you have enough budget for your entire time or if you should cut back/ spend more.
The funding I received was massively helpful towards my experience. THe HECS loan + BEL scholarship covered Accomodation + flights. This meant that out-of-pocket expenses were living essentials + any other wants that I had whilst over there. Having the money for flights and accomodation meant that it was basically up to my own budgeting/ saving up beforehand to decide how much I was able to spend while overseas.
Highlight
I think there is way to many things to talk about here, but I'll name a few. A big one was Carnaval, which is a several-day festival originally meant as a religious holiday. I saw some absolutely insane costumes, and it felt like the entire city got behind it. You also get an entire week off uni, so thats also a big plus. The trips I went on during my breaks in Uni were also really fun. For me, I felt like the first half of my experience I was exploring a lot and enjoying that, but towards the end, my best memories are just spending quality time with the friends I made over there. something as simple as going for coffee after Uni with your crew was honestly just as good as visiting another city/ country.
