Going to Europe in My Early 20s!
Hello everyone! My name is Syahpati Alfatarah, I am currently a second-year student enrolling in the International Undergraduate Program majoring in International Relations studies at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. At the moment, I am doing my exchange semester here in Poznań, Poland, at Adam Mickiewicz University, thanks to International Relations Office UMY for offering this student mobility program, which I currently joined in.
To begin with, going to Poland was never once in my dream nor in my 20s bucket lists. Simply, I have never seen myself going to Europe at the early stage of my life. I am beyond grateful for this opportunity given by IRO, especially Mr. Yordan and his team, which they also helping me a lot throughout the process until finally I made it here.
At first, I thought it wasn’t real about the fact that I am going to Europe and will actually doing my study here. Even now, I am already here in Poland, it feels surreal for me. At times, I am looking back throughout the process of me to get here and realizing it wasn’t an easy process and it makes me very proud of myself. During the journey, I was discovering myself more and more, because of it I can know myself better than before. I learned that myself is capable in many things that I can’t even think of before. I learned that I could manage many things like my time and my stress, solving problems, breaking thorough the language barrier, approaching people from different backgrounds, even there was a moment of me almost missed a flight to Warsaw from Amsterdam and I was succeeded in managing my panic and encourage myself to asking around and finally made it. Not just that, right after arriving in Warsaw I was immediately looking for taxi to go to the train station to catch up my next ride to Poznań and the taxi driver was super nice and giving me a very warm welcome. During the train ride from Warsaw to Poznań, I met a lot of amazing people and made friends with them, we were exchanging stories, laughter, and all. Even recently, during my study in Adam Mickiewicz University, I met a lot of amazing international and Polish friends, amazing professors, and the one and only Dr. Konstiantyn Mazur, my academic coordinator. After all, so far, Poland and its people successfully gave me a very delightful impression and I couldn’t be happier than this.
There is one saying says “Life is a mystery and full of surprises, so just believe that something wonderful is going to happen.” By that being said,go register yourself to IRO UMY student mobility program, especially this student exchange program to Poland, let’s see how far life can take you and what kind of surprises it has for you! Looking forward to see you guys here, UMY friends!
