Rae Templeton, Global E3: KU Leuven, Belgium Summer 2024
Belgium has several key differences in academic culture, though I can only speak to the specific university I attended, KU Leuven. To further break down the experience I’m speaking from, I should mention that I was in the Flemish region which primarily speaks Dutch. Belgium has governmental and cultural differentiation between language speaking groups. I won’t give a lesson on Belgian governmental divisions, but there are 6 governments within the country and the longest they’ve gone without a federal government is 652 days. (Google it!). Since almost everyone is multilingual and knows Dutch, French, and English, I had an easy time navigating most situations.
However, within the classroom there was a disconnect between me and other non-Dutch-speaking students with the Flemish students. In classes taught in English, in which most students were Dutch-speakers, students would ask questions in Dutch and most small talk was also in Dutch. This created a bit of a disconnect in terms of learning for me, and I had to acclimate to asking for clarification and repetition of the question and explanation in English. This put me firmly outside of my comfort zone. Furthermore, my fellow students helped advocate for me when they realized that I couldn’t understand questions and answers given in Dutch. I didn’t make any Dutch speaking friends in my classes, because it felt rude to break into ongoing conversations and force people to switch to English.
Contrary to this, around half of my classes were filled with fellow international students that primarily used English and were all part of the same master’s degree program. They effectively adopted me and another student who was on exchange from France into the first year of their program. They always made sure to invite us to class events and were an invaluable resource when it came to navigating the exam system.
There were some major differences in the university course system that I had to figure out, but I’ll start with the minor ones first. Nearly all classes are recorded and posted to the online course portal, Toledo. This was strange to me at first, since I was used to all lectures being mandatory. However, I quickly found that this system was necessary. The first version of my schedule had three classes that took place at the same time. Also scheduling took place two days before classes started, instead of the 3+ months I was acclimated to. One of my classes that wasn’t recorded was in a different city, Brussels, so I had an hour commute to reach it from Leuven. I tried to make this fun by biking instead occasionally (52 km), but eventually stopped for fear of stranding myself in the countryside with a flat tire.
Furthermore, all but one of my classes were master’s courses. As a result, material was more difficult and focused than bachelor’s courses that I had taken previously. Depending on which faculty a course was in, the composition of students would change drastically between Flemish and international students.
The biggest difference in the academic system was exams. Five out of seven of my classes depended completely on my final exam score and there were no midterms to be heard of. Additionally, my exams were spread over the entire month of June, instead of a single week. This turned exam season into a high stress marathon, the likes of which I had never faced before. Near the end of exam season, I reached a burnout point that ended with me scoring a 3/20 on my last exam. I’m writing another blog post on this. I assure you that this was not a bad thing in the long term.
Furthermore, instead of the sharing of old exam questions being forbidden and sacrilege, it was, in fact, a necessity for passing exams. The professors reused old exam questions the majority of the time, and most old exams were available through wikis established by student organizations.
The overall student culture shifted drastically during exam season. While I was used to hearing students out partying well into the morning on Wednesday and Thursday nights during the semester, during the exam period the city was quiet. For further context nearly all Flemish students would return home every weekend, since Belgium is so small this is easy to do. Subsequently, this made Wednesday and Thursday party nights, and the weekends terrifyingly quiet since a third of Leuven’s population would be gone.
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