It all started with an email that my mail box had been classified as spam. “A spam from Erasmus? That's quite unlikely.” I thought. And indeed it was: it turned out to be about the Exchange Fair. “What is the Exchange Fair?” you might be wondering. Well, it's an event during which some Erasmus+ students volunteer to help promoting studying abroad for a semester or a year and answering all the questions that home students may have. So, the mail I almost didn't read was sent in order to ask for volunteers for this event and I answered to it positively (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this article about the Exchange Fair, one might say).

And that's how I went to promote studying in France for one semester as an Erasmus+ student on Wednesday, the 29th of October from 11 AM to 1 PM, with Marie, another French Erasmus+ student. We had been lent lovely t-shirts and waited patiently at our stand - which was covered with different French universities leaflets - for students to come round and ‘‘bombard’’ us with questions.

We didn't see many Modern Languages students (had they got the information they needed prior to the Fair?) but helped many students from different departments, for example from History, Law or Engineering. It was really nice to see that a lot of students were interested in coming to France to study, even though they did not all speak the language (which unfortunately is quite important when coming to France to study, I'm afraid, for there is a great chance that most of the courses will be taught in French).

I hope we have been able to help those who came to our stand, for we really did our best. All the universities had not sent leaflets, so we were not able to hand some to all those who came by, but we didn't let any interested student leave our stand without at least an idea of which website to go to for more information. We did our best to help everyone out – of that I’m sure!

All in all, this experience was really nice to take part in, and I was really excited to see such a great number of stands, each of them representing a different country! Exciting stuff! I hope that this event helped many students to make up their mind on going abroad for one semester or for a full year, because trust me…it's an experience worth doing!

And remember, if you can speak a bit of French, do go to France! We have delicious baguettes, croissants and lots of wine!

 

Written by Marion Joubert

 

Marion is a French Erasmus + student from Angers and is currently studying Modern Languages (English, Spanish and Chinese) in Southampton. She loves reading books, watching movies... and going out with her new friends from all over the world!