GEARE Students Abroad in 2022 - Part 5

As the world begins to return to some semblance of normalcy following the pandemic, we are thrilled to have our GEARE students abroad this semester all around the world. On a weekly basis throughout the semester, I will be sharing some of the experiences of the students abroad. The goal of these posts is to highlight the accomplishments and endeavors of our wonderful cohort of students abroad in 2022. In this week’s post, Allie Losey and Miranda Daane have shared some of their experiences being abroad.

Allie Losey is a Mechanical Engineering student currently working abroad at Siemens in Berlin, Germany where she has been “doing research on additive manufacturing, which has been extremely interesting.” However, her best experiences so far have happened “while going out to explore Berlin, trying new foods and visiting old historical buildings that have so much history.”

While students typically study abroad first and then do their work abroad experience in the summer, students abroad in Germany will usually do their work experience first and then do the study abroad component in the ‘spring’ semester that begins in April. For Allie, in April, she will be “moving to Hanover, Germany, to begin the semester abroad at Leibniz Universität Hannover.”

One piece of advice that Allie has for current students is that “while traveling to other cities and sightseeing is great to do while abroad, make sure to soak up smaller experiences to understand the local culture too. Order something from a new bakery, take public transport to a random stop, go to a flea market, etc. These have been some of [her] favorite experiences!”

Miranda Daane is an Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering student currently studying abroad at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Madrid, Spain. She is currently “attending classes five days a week, and taking four classes, which are Control of Aerospace Systems, Helicopters and other Aircraft, Space Vehicles and Orbital Dynamics, and Microeconomics.” Since arriving in Spain, she has also “done a bit of traveling to neighboring cities like Segovia and Toledo.” Her best experience abroad so far has been a “trip to Toledo with some of [her] friends from Purdue.”

For the summer, she is hoping to “do a research-based internship through the DAAD Rise Germany Program.” One piece of advice that Miranda has for current students that want to study abroad is “to get out of your comfort zone and be open to experience or try things you may not do in your home country. You will create a lot of great memories and learn more about yourself by doing this.”

After the pandemic made global travel impossible in 2021, it is great to have GEARE students back studying and working around the world in 2022! I hope to continue to share student experiences like these throughout the rest of the semester, highlighting two new students every week.