By Matthew Clark

Kia ora, my name is Matthew Clark.  I am an Undergraduate Psychology student studying at Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato.

My upcoming exchange will not be my first time abroad.  I have been fortunate to travel overseas with my family, however, I am yet to travel without them, which I expect will be a challenge.

I have many different motivations that have led me to pursue a Global Experience.  I have lived all of my short life to date in the Waikato region.  As much as I love where I live, the opportunity to live away from home (albeit for a limited time), study overseas, sight-see and experience another country and culture seemed too good to pass up.  

When I began researching potential locations that the Waikato Global Experiences team had on offer, it was easy to feel overwhelmed.  In a good way, of course!  I decided that for my Semester Exchange, I would like to study abroad in the Netherlands.  My Oma and Opa (Grandparents) on my mother’s side emigrated from the Netherlands to New Zealand, and we have remained in contact with our family living there.  I would like to both experience Dutch life in the Netherlands and visit family while I am there.  

I chose the University College Maastricht (UCM) in Maastricht as my Tertiary Institution of choice.  It is a Liberal Arts and Social Sciences College that is a part of the larger Maastricht University.  UCM has a Problem-Based Learning Model of learning that encourages independent learning and student interaction in tutorials, as well as course lectures.  From an academic standpoint, I like the idea of being able to meet with classmates and share ideas, questions and discussions in a small group environment.

Location-wise, Maastricht seems like a beautiful small city.  I cannot wait to see what it looks like in person.  It seems well located for access to other locations in the Netherlands as well as nearby countries (the Germany and Belgium borders are not far away).