How time flies! It has been a year since I left Xiamen for the M.A. Economics of International Trade and European Integration (EITEI) program in Europe. When I look back to the whole journey, I feel very grateful to have this opportunity to learn and live in Europe. It really opens my eyes to a brand new world.
As you may know, the EITEI program is a European joint studies program, which means every student will spend three semesters in three different universities in Europe. Wenjian Zhao and I have spent 4 months in Universit?des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, 3 months in Univesiteit Antwerpen and another 3 months in Vysok?歬ola ekonomick?v Praze.
In the semester of Lille, we mainly studied in the economic core courses, which included Advanced Micro and Marco, Econometrics and Mathematics. Besides, we also had an intensive course of French, which focus on daily language and practice. Honestly speaking, the economic core courses in Lille were not technically comparable to what we had in WISE for the first year. Most of the time, we were taught in semi-intermediate level materials, since most of our classmates had just graduated from their bachelors?university. We are very thankful to the curriculum design in WISE. It actually makes us much more competitive in this program.
For the other two semesters in Antwerp and Prague, we switched our focus to the international trade and European policy and had courses like Economics of European Integration and Transition (EEIT) and Selected Topics in EU Policy (STEUP). The EEIT course was quite challenging for us, since it combined the economic theories with the history of European integration together. We needed to pick up the 揷ommon?knowledge of EU history in a quick pace and put them into use when we went to the on-class discussions. The STEUP course, on the other hand, focused on practical experience and was organized in a form of seminars. The school invited lawyer, politicians as well as economists to give us insights into the EU policies, such as the legal and economic aspects of Competition Policy, Labor Market and Social Policy, Transport Policy and EU Institutional Issues. It inspired us to see how the principles on class were applied to the reality.
Generally speaking, the EITEI program is more about policy effects and economic practices rather than advanced theories or methodologies. It persuaded students to participate in on-class discussions and after-class reassessments, and encourage students to actually apply what they learned into what they did. For example, instead of having an exam, for our econometric courses, we had to hand in a team project concerning with the topic we had discussed during the class and employed at least one of the econometric method we had been taught into our research. It really helped us to get familiar with the whole process of economic research and contributed to our later dissertation writing.
Aside from studying in the school, Wenjian and I had an amazing time in Europe, not only because that we traveled through several countries by our own, but also because of the friends we made here. It was tough to relocate in different countries for every 3 months. But our friends helped us to go through that very smoothly. Moreover, they had invited us to their family in Italy, Poland and Austria, which gave us opportunities to see how diverse the European identity is and enjoy the different cultures. With them, my life has been so beautiful.
In sum, it was a great opportunity for us to study in Europe. During the program, we learned how to applied economic theories into political reality; we learned how to work with different language and cultural settings; and more importantly, we learned how to enjoy the diversity of life and the beauty of being different.
