(why take classes on campus when you can take them abroad???)

I remember going into college wanting really badly to study abroad and being fairly certain it wouldn’t happen. I’m an engineering major; everyone said it was impossible/unwise/expensive/impossible.

Well, darling, I can tell you for sure it’s possible. I did it.

I woke up one morning and said to myself, I want to do the EE summer study abroad, walked into the Study Abroad office, and by afternoon, had started my application. A touch of spontaneity never hurt anybody.

So why did I (and why should you) do a summer study abroad? Here are five reasons from before and after my experience.

1. It fit neatly into my plan.

Okay, so that spontaneity was…modified spontaneity. I had been eyeing the summer study abroad featuring electrical engineering for a few months. It fit nicely in my plan of required courses and helped me complete my EE and humanities requirements. Plus, being a summer semester meant it would take some of the load off of my regular (fairly packed) semesters on campus.

2. The classes have a different learning format.

Class is still class. However, both EE and humanities were configured differently from a class in a regular semester on campus. Humanities met all around Berlin, meaning the classroom was the city. Classes consisted of tours of the city and its memorial sites and discussions of the sites and the assigned readings. EE met in a classroom in the Berlin WorldWide campus. Since there were fewer classes than even a summer semester on campus, class often ran for several hours. However, content was interspersed with breaks. I, for one, preferred having large chunks of information at once over a shorter semester; it helped when trying to connect and retain concepts. In both classes, assignments were designed with the “abroad” nature of the course in mind: they did not serve as “busy work” but as a means for the students to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts in the course.

3. The class size is small(er than usual).

That means you get to bond with your classmates and professors and learn loads more about them. Which is fun. It also means the professor can take the time to explain a concept more carefully if a student is struggling to grasp it. Which is super helpful.

4. You actually will expand your perspective.

I’m sorry. I know. The ultimate cliché. But it’s true. Whether that’s learning to use public transport (not applicable to me personally), about different infrastructure systems (the intercity trains in Germany are pretty awesome), to say right, left, train, airport, and bye in a new language (recht, links, zug, flughafen, tschüss), or about local food favorites (kebaps, kebaps, kebaps). Those seem like small details, but truly, seeing different cultures creates a broader understanding of the many different approaches people have to life, which is a valuable understanding you will not gain in the classroom (or in Daytona Beach…because you’ve kind of already seen it and it’s still the States).

5. YOU’RE ABROAD.

After class, you have a whole, exciting, unknown city to explore, which we all know is infinitely more exciting than endless heaps of homework and Daytona Beach (sorry, DB, but Berlin is way cooler).

We are already more than halfway through the month of June and I feel it goes by so fast. Here is a recap of the last couple weeks I worked at the airport.

At the beginning of June, we started receiving the passenger statistics from the airlines for the month of May. The file the companies give us usually contain: the date, flight number, origin and destination, passengers deplaned and passengers emplaned, aircraft type, and seats available. Some airlines include revenue passengers as well as non revenue passengers. Non Revenue passengers are usually babies that are two years old and under and crew that are travelling. What I do is that I take all the passenger totals from each airline and I combine them in an Access and Excel database.

I also do the same thing I mentionned above but with cargo. It includes the inbound and outbound cargo. We enter the cargo in kilograms but the american carriers calculates their cargo in pounds so we have to convert it.

First Air B737-400 Combi getting ready for its flight to Kuujjuaq. The aircraft can carry 4 cargo pallets and 72 passengers.

A few weeks ago, I met with the airport’s Schedule Facilitator. A part of his job consists of assigning the gates to the aircraft. He showed me the screen with all the gates assignments for a typical day. It looks like a big puzzle with different colors. It is not that easy to assign a gate to an aircraft. The turnaround of the aircraft and the size of the plane must be taken into account. For example, Delta’s Boeing 717 is usually parked for the night at gate C72,  because of its larger wingspan, while the other of Delta’s regional jets use gate C86 to C89 which are a bit further down the concourse.

United Express RJs getting ready to depart for their early morning flights.

Aeroméxico B738 featuring the new Split Scimitar Winglets. The aircraft is pushing back for its daily flight to Mexico City.

I also got to take a look at the new international concourse extension. The airport is adding six new international jet bridges to accomodate growth. Air China recently announced that it would begin flying from Beijing (PEK) to Montreal three times a week starting late September. Air China will be the first carrier operating scheduled flights from Montreal to the capital of China. New carriers added service to Montreal in the couple past few years, such as Copa Airlines to Panama City, Turkish Airlines to Istanbul, and Qatar Airways to Doha.

This is an idea of how the terminal will look like in about a year.

Extension of 6 new gates from the current International Concourse.

Everyday I spend working at the airport, I learn something new. I love that I am able to work in an environment I am studying in!

Until next time!

Nicolas