Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Hallo!

I’ve been in Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands for about a month now and everything so far has been amazing! Maastricht is a student city with a population just over 100,000 and is very close to the border of both Belgium and Germany – which has made it a very convenient place to explore Europe from on weekends/breaks. Below is a picture of the main square in Maastricht with one of the oldest churches in the Netherlands!

When I first arrived in late January it was freezing! The maximum temperature during the day didn’t get much higher than 3 or 4 degrees and it snowed quite a few days! The main way to get around town is via bike so this made for some very interesting bike rides!

I’m staying at the Guesthouse here in Maastricht which is a lot of fun in itself, even though it is a converted hospital building (Note the rainbow in the below photo – It is nice here sometimes!). Just in my hallway of roughly 20 people there are people from Australia, America, Canada, Spain, Italy, China and many more! Living with people from such diverse backgrounds makes every day even more interesting – one person from Spain is even coming to UTS next semester so I’ve been able to help them with information about Sydney and UTS (small world!).

As for the university itself, Maastricht Uni use a problem-based learning system which is very different to the way classes are taught at UTS, with a much higher workload. The students are expected to lead tutorial discussions on each topic and are graded on their participation in doing so. As well as this, the semester is broken up into periods in which you do two subjects at a time, so even though I’ve only been here just over a month, we are only a few weeks away from our first exam block.

Overall, my first month in Maastricht has been a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to the remainder of my time here and in the rest of Europe!

Sean Dalwood
98104060
Bachelor of Business
Maastricht University
The Netherlands.