Requirements & preparations:
For Capilano University you basically only need the DAAD certificate, which my university fortunately issued to me. After submitting all the necessary certificates, you only need a little patience until the feedback from Capilano University arrives.
Itinerary:
After receiving the acceptance, I planned my semester abroad. I also looked at many notes and photos from Vancouver. On all social media channels you can see what attractions there are around Vancouver. I arrived a week early to visit Vancouver Island. During our time at university we did a lot of smaller activities (hiking in Whistler, Surrey, Downtown, Vancouver, Seattle, Banff, etc.). The best time, however, was the one that was spent without visiting any tourist attractions. You just felt you belonged to the city and the people. After my unbelievably great time in Canada, we then have ten days in Hawaii that perfectly rounded off the semester abroad.
University & Student Residence:
Capilano University is an incredibly beautiful university that is located in the middle of the forest. It is located in North Vancouver and is one of the smaller universities in Vancouver. The largest university in Vancouver is the UBC, to which the entire western part of Vancouver is assigned. As an international, however, it was very good to be at Capilano University with the small classes, because you got to know a lot of new people so quickly.
Since you not only have finals at Capilano University, but also midterms and a wide variety of submissions, the workload through the semester is relatively high. However, that doesn’t matter because you meet so many fellow students and friends in the library that even studying is fun. In the various courses that I took, there was a midterm and several submissions throughout the semester, which means that the effort in all subjects was the same. My courses were arranged in such a way that I went to university on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from around 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The other days I was off. The courses can simply be chosen freely and there are even options for the times for some courses. Capilano University is super flexible there.
Courses:
Marketing: I would recommend it to everyone. The teacher was super nice and the tasks were very exciting. Although I have already studied marketing in Germany, I would say that I learned more than twice as much in this course.
People Management: Here the teacher was also very nice and the workload was similarly high. For example, we had to prepare for a job interview and we made a video application for it and had to upload it to YouTube for evaluation. This kind of learning brings you so much further than the typical learning methods in Germany.
Organizational Behavior: The teacher here was super nice and typically Canadian. He was very conservative, but totally cordial. I liked Organizational Behavior best because the teacher influenced and manipulated the students at the beginning of the semester. During the semester he explained to us the theories and approaches, how he manipulated us so that we let him guide us. The fact that you could see that the theories about leading people worked for us too, made us understand them better.
Small Business / Entrepreneurship: I didn’t like the course that much because the teacher was very disorganized. I didn’t like taking part in the course, but I got a very good grade at the end of the course.
Leisure:
According to Andyeducation, Vancouver is the richest city in activity. In the summer we went surfing on Vancouver Island, while we did a lot of hiking in the fall. When winter approached, we went skiing and were able to take the entire leisure program with us in Canada. The city is immediately on the forest (Stanley Park). It borders on mountains and sea and thus has a balance that is not available anywhere else in the world. We were very lucky with the weather and had summer until around the end of October. From then on it got very rainy. But this rain is somehow different than in Germany and somehow belongs to the Raincouver feeling.
Conclusion:
It was the best travel destination I could have wished for for my semester abroad. Compared to other countries, Canada is the only one I would prefer to live in rather than vacation. There are many cities in which one can explore the flair of the city well through a vacation. However, I am glad I was able to live in Canada to understand the mentality of the people and to feel connected to the city.
