“Hello, students! We are students at Drohobych University, Faculty of Human Health and Natural Sciences. We have recently returned from an internship under the Erasmus+ program and we want to share our impressions with you! We have completed a 3-month internship at the University of Humanities and Natural Sciences named after Jan Dlugosz in Częstochowa, Poland (#jandlugoszuniversity).
How did we get there? First of all, we are always eager for new knowledge, discoveries and impressions. Svitlana Yaroslavivna Voloshanska suggested that we take part in the program. We gladly accepted the offer, because we like to learn and develop in our field, and this is a great opportunity for that. When we had all the necessary documents we set off with a burning desire to go and basic knowledge of Polish!
The first week upon arrival, we dealt with organizational issues – our coordinator Ilya Kulchikovsky from Jan Dlugosz University explained all the details and continued to help us throughout our training, for which we are incredibly grateful! Now about the training itself – it was a wonderful and new experience! Probably, you have often heard that studying at European universities has its own characteristics, and here are some of them: flexible schedule of classes – classes could start at 8:00 a.m., and the last one could be at 6:45 p.m.; Polish students work a lot individually, everyone minds their own results and knowledge; students have a lot of practice in classes, where laboratory classes last 3-4 hours, they carry out all reactions and syntheses themselves under the supervision of the teacher (so we also had the opportunity to carry out many experiments ourselves).
What was also interesting – the students there did not take notes of the lectures, and every time we started to write something down, the teachers said: “don’t worry, you don’t need to write anything, I will send all the lectures to you by mail.” By the way, you won’t need a notebook at all, you can safely bring in a laptop, especially since you often have to make presentations and reports on various topics, so a laptop will definitely come in handy there!
Were the teachers very demanding? Yes of course! Like all teachers, the teachers there were also demanding – some to a greater extent, some to a lesser extent. But interestingly, they are all extremely friendly! From our first days at the university, the teachers asked how we settled in, whether we had already found our way in the university, whether we understood everything, how was the situation at home, whether everything was calm, they constantly supported Ukraine when the topic came up, in general, they helped in everything they could . Also, we were not asked too much in terms of language – all teachers understood, and if we could not say something in Polish, they offered to say it in English or Ukrainian (they even offered to make presentations in Ukrainian). Also, they often invited us to various scientific conferences held at the university, and during classes they could tell interesting stories from their scientific activities, and even gave us a tour of their research laboratory!
How did the Polish students receive us? Great! We will say right away that not only Poles study there, there were also other Ukrainians, and some Spaniards under the Erasmus+ program – and they all treated us very well. With the Ukrainians, we immediately found a common language, with the Polish students we communicated little by little and later became good friends, with the Spanish students we communicated little at first, but during our studies we had to prepare joint projects in pairs (one student from Ukraine, one from Spain), so quickly found a common language, and also improved our English and even learned a little Spanish! They often told us about their travels, about Spain, about their studies and life in general, which was very interesting!
Since we had free time, we also traveled a little. On weekends, they went to visit friends in Wroclaw, Ulyana even managed to fly to Italy, and for New Year to Germany, and also visited such cities as Warsaw and Krakow. On other days after school, we met with our Polish friends, with whom we made friends there, they showed us the city and we often spent leisure time together! We are extremely grateful to everyone who helped us take part in the internship – Svitlana Voloshanska for such an extraordinary offer, our Faculty of Human Health and Natural Sciences for support and help in education, Lidiya Romanyk and the entire Department of International Relations for help with the preparation of documents and solution to all questions!
All in all, it was an extremely wonderful and interesting experience! We are very pleased that we had the opportunity to live and study in Europe for three months, get to know another culture, learn new traditions, make new acquaintances and make friends with wonderful people! We are extremely grateful to our university for such an opportunity, and we encourage students of our university to participate in such exchanges of experience, study, develop, learn about the world and become better every day!”
Iryna Paraschak and Ulyana Savitska
Students at the Faculty of Human Health and Natural Sciences
