An Introduction...

Hello everyone, and welcome to my personal blog about my international exchange!  I am a third year student at the Odette School of Business with a concentration in accounting. During the next four months, I hope to write on a weekly basis about my experience.  I hope that this blog will allow you to live vicariously through my adventures, or convince you to embark on an international exchange of your own!

This primary decision to embark on an exchange abroad is the experience that it will provide for me.  While some students may opt to attend a university outside of their home city, I believe that an exchange truly allows one to experience freedom while attempting to balance it with responsibility. I will be able to witness the challenges of living in a foreign country – while being a resident rather than a vacationing tourist. I believe this experience will prove to be especially valuable for business students, as some international experience can prove to be a valuable asset for businesses. 

There is a wide range of exchange opportunities that are available for students if they are interested in studying abroad.  The University of Windsor has partnered with various universities around the world for students who wish to participate in a semester or two of exchange. Students can choose to learn in either English or the country’s native language.  I am attending school at the Rouen Business School in Rouen, France, and will be studying in English.  This is especially helpful as my knowledge in French isn’t particularly strong – although I am hoping that it will improve when I return in late December! Business students can view the different destinations at the exchange website here for more information.  

The academic process at this point has been fairly straightforward. An advantage about the exchange process is the ability to experience a wider diversity of courses. With preparation ahead of time, most courses are transferable to credits at the University of Windsor and count towards your graduation.  The process of preparing involves finding course equivalencies at the University of Windsor, which consists of filing out a course form from the Exchange Office and submitting the course syllabus to the dean’s office at the faculty you believe the course would transfer over to. They will then evaluate the course, and provide you with a similar matching course or a generic course number for the transfer of credits and grades.

As I had mentioned before, the city that I will be residing in is Rouen, France.  It is about an hour and a half from Paris, and is the historical capital of Normandy. The background picture for this blog is a panoramic view of part of the city that was kindly borrowed from photographer Thierry Selva. In preparation for my trip, I have purchased a tourism book that covers the history and “must see” places in Europe.  I have learned that there is a great deal of history in Rouen.  For example, Joan of Arc was burned for hearsay in Rouen in 1431. I will write about other interesting facts and hidden secrets that I discover about Rouen during my exchange.

I hope to write my second blog article within the next week and discuss my travel to Rouen and orientation that the school has set up for international students. Thanks for reading!