Hello, everyone I am writing here since I want to share with you my shocking experience being an international student in the Netherlands for the first two years of my bachelor, firstly in Artificial Intelligence and then in Psychology.

A little disclaimer is here necessary since I do not really want to destroy all of your bright hopes for a better future in another country, is just my opinion and a piece of my life that I want to share with you guys. I started out with the best intentions and was forced to quit it before it destroyed me from the inside, and looking at it retrospectively I can actually state that it was not really all of my fault but, as you will see, also dependent upon the other-than-great welcoming of my Uni (the Radboud University) and the general organization of the international student life here in Nijmegen.

Order.

I moved in Nijmegen in August 2016, right after my summer spent admiring and hoping that the time that was in between me and my new life passed quickly. I graduated from a Liceo Classico in Napoli, meaning that I had been studying Latin and Greek for five years, and now I was ready for a dramatic change in my life studying Artificial Intelligence, something completely unrelated to my previous academic path. My will was clear: changing country in order to upgrade my life (or so I thought). When I took my flight in order to reach my new city Nijmegen I was really happy, I could feel everything moving dynamically around me and the sparkling air of my youth surrounding me. I arrived in Schipol, I took a train and I arrived to the central station of nijmegen, there i walked all the way to Hoogeveldt where my new home was (here a pic of my room).

Everything got by smoothly until the start of the university a couple of days later, people seemed funny and I was not missing home much. Let’s start saying that Radboud University, at least in 2016, was not really transparent concerning the number of real international students enrolled in the course; they told us we were a considerable percentage but at the end of the day everything solved out as the real international students, the “outcasts” coming from somewhere far away, then the macrogroup of Germans and then the Dutchies, with which I tried to bond desperately but did not manage to, cultural differences I guess (?).The first class I took was Programming I, I can never forget that when I asked for help for an assignment to my professor he asked me to do it in dutch, I moved there just some days before, when i replied I did not know dutch, he answered telling me that it was time for me to learn and that I was already late, then he continued speaking dutch and german with the vast majority of my fellow students.Basically I felt out of place just because of my nationality and for the language I spoke. In the first formal reasoning class the professor asked in dutch, obviously, whether there was someone contrary to the lessons being held in dutch, and the course was registered as english-held. Now I didn’t speak up because as I said beforehand I didn’t know shit of dutch, but fortunately my fellow germans who understood more than me what was going on, did so; the professor reluctantly started to teach in english.

Other than that, the university campus activities are basically all for dutch speaking people, all of the cultural initiatives are for the dutchies. Not complaining here with the specific people who organize those events, but the university should do something in order to integrate dutch and non-dutch parts of the students, it is not acceptable that international students are not really represented both culturally and not even for the nightlife events.

There are some initiatives for international students but they are all Erasmus-oriented, so with people way older than me, and most of them external to the uni campus and the uni environment. Other than that a positive note has to be added here: most of dutch people can speak english and are willing to do so.

I quitted in December 2016 AI since I did not like it at all and the course didn’t fit what I wanted my life to be, furthermore professor were unwelcoming and made me feel like I was completely on the wrong way, all the time. I switched to psychology (God only knows how many times I said this exact sequence of words) it was better there but even though I wanted to really make the best out of my experience, the Uni left me behind putting all of the stress of finding new places where to go and not really following me, I found myself lost in a snowy foreign city, without family and without support, and the Uni or anyone there was not caring.

From December until June 2017 I did my exams and I managed to find a house at the end of June miraculously since private dutch landlords are not really willing to rent an apartment to international students, furthermore people who are looking for flatmates want them to be dutch or female, none of the things I was. The house I found was in the city center and was inhabited by all dutchies, “Nice”, I said, “finally I am going to learn some dutch”.

After a couple of days I came back to Italy, I passed the summer there, and then came back to the Netherlands in September, for my first official year of psychology there at the RU.

What I found was a depressing situation where all of my previous flatmates in Hoogeveldt, who were all Erasmus students, moved back to their countries, and there I was, completely alone, far from home. I didn’t back up though and I tried everything I could to interact with my flamates in dutch, to hang out with them, to do something together, nothing. Everything I did in order to get out of the stereotyped italian clique, I was pushed back to it, and at the end of the day italian people there were all kept me socially alive.

The new coursemates were not really sociable either and everyone minded their own business, as if nobody was interested in you. I was starting to get real depressed and really felt that my situation was destroying the hopeful Fabio I was, I was developing a feel of learned helplessness but I decided to keep it stable and to mantain my situation, surely because i was not fully aware of my situation, I did not realize what I was doing.

I came back to Italy and tried to dissimulate all of me, my feelings, my impressions because I didn’t want to disappoint my parents, who fell in love as I did with the idea of the “Dutch graduate”. At a certain point I exploded and I started to question everything that I did, and there I told myself I was never ever wanting to be back again there, in the full nothingness, doing anything but living, since Nijmegen doesn’t offer much apart from the trashy EL SOMBRERO nights and the houseparties in Hoogeveldt.

If it was not for the music and my passion for playing it, I couldn’t have survived this year and half. Thanks God art exists and gives people a mean to express themselves. It was basically me, my saxophone and I.

I am obviously forgetting and not telling an enormous amount of significative experiences but here are my two cents, if you have to choose for studying abroad, do not go to Radboud, I would recommend based on my experience.