Personal Development
I got to know people from the world over, and still keep in contact with some of them after the exchange experience. I also developed my everyday German conversational and reading capabilities.
Academic Development
I got the opportunity to see which study habits were effective in Germany's learning environment and which were not useful. Specifically, I learnt how to make the best of limited learning resources, and how to leverage limited university support to my advantage. These were all a consequence of the drastically different learning expectations at TUM compared to UQ. In the first few weeks, I fell behind on lecture content because I relied too much on support from lecturers and classes, neglecting to plan and organise how I was going to learn content.
Professional Development
The proficiency in German from this experience can help expand job opportunities to any role that requires some contact in the language. This is especially important in engineering, as many global engineering firms are based in Germany, and view German proficiency favourably amongst their employees and clients.
Budget
I had a spreadsheet with estimated monthly costs for different categories such as groceries, travel, accommodation and so on. Each month, I would review how much I expected to spend that month, and compare it with how much I actually spent, and then update my estimates. This gave me a good idea of how much money the total exchange experience would require.
Highlights
The highlight of my experience was probably the days I got to just explore Munich. I greatly enjoyed taking a walk through the old city, or bringing a book to read in the Olympic park.
I also loved going on day trips with people I had met who were also on exchange.
Top Tips
Start organising things early on. I just used a default Notes app to keep track of tasks to do, and that was enough for me.
Meet people early on. You will have a lot of energy when you start your exchange. Use that to go out and meet people early on. You might be surprised at how deep some of these friendships can go.
