5th Assignment: review of the European Union Policies minor

Writing this last assignment feels like a good way to do a sort of bilan about my semester of study in Breda as it’s coming to an end. I’m a French exchange student and before I arrived in Breda my only worries were about where I would live, the weather, the Dutch way of life, in other words nothing about the study.

When I had to choose which minor I would follow during my semester in Avans, I didn’t have any idea about what I wanted to do. After reading the description of the three available minors, my choice was done: I was going to study European Union Policies.

Why did I choose that minor? First of all, I don’t like finance, so the IBE minor was already out of my choices. Secondly, between Asian Trade and European Policies I felt closer to EUP since I’m myself an European citizen and I wanted to improve my knowledge about the European Union, therefore EUP was like an evidence for me.

Were my expectations fulfilled? Yes, and even more.

During those 4 months of studying EUP I had a lot of “ups” and “downs”.

The lesson I’ll never forget is the first negotiating class, we were divided in groups of 3 students representing a EU member state and we had to negotiate about one topic related to the EU as if we were real European politicians. After this class I thought: this is serious, we’re learning things that are happening right now inside the European Union and I knew that it would be interesting.

The highlight of the semester was of course the excursion. We had the chance to visit European Union institution in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. And to talk with people who are directly linked to the EU, it was no longer about theory, but about practise, it was concrete.

In the other hands I have some “downs” I’d like to talk about.

The lessons I would rather never had is law. I hardly can follow my law classes in French so it was even worst to keep up when the class was in English. Moreover, law isn’t my favourite subject as sometimes it’s too theoretical and to be franc quite boring.

Although the minor is called European Union Policies, the content is very wide. Politics, economy, finance, law, every week we studied a different aspect of the EU. Not only the content is wide, but also the learning methods. Lectures, tutor groups, training sessions, project groups, it was totally a new way of learning for me because in my school in France we didn’t have classes such as tutor groups. Let me tell you about the tutor groups, I remember my first lesson, the professor told us about the “seven steps model” and I had no clue about what is was about. I was totally lost and it was even worst when the teacher explained us that we were going to lead the class and not him. One student would be the chairman and we would discuss the task and ask questions following the seven steps model. I thought a class without teacher how is that possible? But after 4 months of tutor groups I was looking forward to the day I’d be the chairman of the class.

After 4 months of studying this minor, my recommendations to a new student who don’t know which minor to chose would be to chose EUP. Not because this is the minor I did, but because you can’t never be bored as the topic of the lessons changes every weeks and is very wide, also like I said every class is different from the other.

In conclusion, I’ll always have a good feeling thinking about this semester in Avans, the minor was very interesting and I learnt a lot of things about the European Union. If I had to give a grade to the minor, I’ll give a 8,5/10.