The other day, a student stopped me on my way to my office, and greeted me saying “Hi, I just wanted to thank you for the recommendation letter you wrote for me last year for my lab exchange. I just came back from the exchange in US. It was an amazing experience and I now want to go back to US after graduating to do research there.”  I was really excited to hear this. Not because I made a difference to this student (I didn’t really, because when I checked, my letter was not amazing at all). I was excited because here was a student who experienced the same that I experienced many years ago on my first exchange.

 

 

I had my fair share of student exchanges as an undergraduate. Hence, I feel quite qualified to talk about this topic. In fact I spent two full years on exchange, one year after my second year in medical school and one more year after my fourth year. And the exchange programmes did not even count towards my degree. So I ended up studying for eight instead of six years. But so what, life is not a race. (Luckily we did not need to pay tuition fees in Germany.)

 

I vividly remember the beginning of my first lab attachment. My first time on a plane, going all the way to Boston, being taken to some sort of welcome party by my new lab mates that was also their superbowl party, and not understanding anything they were talking about. A few days later I moved into my room, which they helped me to find and which was furnished with unwanted office furniture from the department.

 

 

In this room I spent eight months, writing my lab book, reading papers and sleeping at the oddest times. These were probably the most exciting months of my life.

 

What was so exciting about it?

Well, everything.

Being completely on my own and having complete freedom. (On weekends, I used to go to the lab in the evenings, worked all night and then went to play basketball in the early morning).

The weather. Those clear blue skies in the winter that warmed you during the day and made me shiver (and my nose freeze) in the early morning.

The friendliness of the people. The city life, where so much is happening outdoors in the spring and summer. I remember just being there, riding the subway, listening to street musicians playing in subway stations, made me think “Wow, how happy I am to be here”.

 

 

But what was probably the most exciting thing of all was discovering how amazing research can be like. What made it so exciting? It was firstly the lab atmosphere, being surrounded by passionate graduate students who talked about research all the time.

 

 

And secondly experiments that worked and let me actually figure things out…

 

…and publish my first paper.

 

Similar to the life science student mentioned at the beginning, I wanted to go back, and when an opportunity came up two years later to take some of my clinical courses at Tufts University Medical Centre in Boston, I jumped on it.

 

I have quite vivid memories of this period, but most of these memories were actually not that positive. They include waking up at unearthly hours with freezing temperatures ad catching the first train in the morning, being on the ward all night for 14 hours, only going home to sleep, and small group classes where I just wanted to dissolve in air because I never knew the answer to anything.

 

And in terms of the long term impact, there was hardly anything that had a lasting effect. I didn’t make new friends because my fellow students always changed and they didn’t care too much about the exchange students. I didn’t build relationships with any teachers because I didn’t really interact with them very much (my fault?). (I was probably thinking why would they want to talk to someone who doesn’t know a thing.) And I didn’t acquire anything that was unique and could have made a difference in terms of my future aspirations.

 

So I was really happy when I finally could go back to my old lab for the remainder of the exchange and do more research!

 

So for me, the lesson was very obvious. Being on a lab exchange actually meant I was really immersing in daily life like the locals do. I was practically part of it. And it allowed me to really get to know people and learn about their way of living and culture, forming life-long bonds, getting unique skills and actually publishing research papers. And all this had major effects on my future, as it helped me to find out what I want to do and helped me to achieve it.

 

So from this, you already know my advice on whether or not you should go on exchange. But if you actually do go on a coursework student exchange, you should make sure you make the most of it. Live with locals, join some clubs and if you have enough free time, join a lab. And then when you come back, life will possibly no longer be the same.