I am Intanta, an Indonesian student from Universitas Negeri Malang who recently underwent a student exchange program at Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey. I gained this study abroad opportunity from a government scholarship program called Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA). I’ve gone through many delightful and challenging experiences, from the initial process of registering for IISMA to being accepted, then actually going to turkey, up to returning back again to Indonesia.
I learned about this program from one of my faculty lecturers, and then I and some of my friends decided to apply for this program. In the beginning, the administrative process for registration was quite complicated and there were many documents that had to be prepared, but everything went smoothly because of the support provided by our faculty lecturers and my university international office, who supervised and regularly provided guidance. For instances by arranging zoom meetings and created a written guide for us students who wanted to register for IISMA.
I arrived in Turkey on October 2021, it was autumn so the weather was starting to feel cold. At first, the contrast with the weather was uncomfortable, but as time went on I got used to it. I spend most of my daily life in the campus area, and I stayed in dormitories with other IISMA students, local students, and also some international students. Living as a foreign student like this has really taught me how to manage my spending more thoroughly, and to understand different living cultural habits. But most importantly I learn how to receive help from others and also give them. Because for us international students, there’s sure a lot of new and confusing stuff that we encounter while living abroad, and helping each other is how we were able to thrive and grow together. Living and travelling on your own surely gives you a greater sense of independence and expands your world views tremendously. Another thing that I felt was greatly enhanced because of my experience in studying abroad is my English, especially my listening capabilities, where I would constantly be introduced to various different kinds of accents.
At METU, I also found that the course selection process is not so different from the course selection process at my home university, where we can choose the courses we want through a website kind of system at a predetermined time. I myself finally decided to take three courses. The three courses that I have chosen turn out to have different procurement methods for carrying out teaching and learning activities. One of them is held online, the other is a hybrid – a mix of online and offline, and the other is held offline. This is because when I was there Covid-19 was still a problem that, even though it was not as critical as the previous year, was still worrying for most of the people there. During the time I spent there my home university department lecturers and the international office would also regularly contact me to make sure I was doing well.
Apart from having a great academic experience at my host University, I also gain a lot of very interesting historical and cultural insights from the places I visited in Turkey. I visited historical places such as, Anitkabir, the Hagia-Sophia mosque, underground cities, roman ruins, and so many more. I am very grateful because even though at that time we were in the midst of a pandemic, I could still be given the opportunity to study abroad.