I am WAN Po Yu, an undergraduate from Hong Kong, China and I came to study at Mannheim as an exchange student in the business school. During the semester, I took a total of four courses, including Behavioral Finance, Corporate Finance and Risk Management, Strategic and International Management and Operation Management. In this brand new environment, I have had interesting and fruitful learning experience here. Hence, I am writing this report to share these experiences.

In terms of the courses, I have had my very first intensive course, behavioral finance. In Hong Kong, almost all courses are taught weekly. However, intensive courses are commonly found here. Behavioral finance lasted for 2 weeks only. The shorter gap between lectures required me to be highly focused during each lectures because time allowed for me to digest the materials before the next lecture was limited. This was demanding yet I liked it since I was more self-motivated to learn. Also, the subject materials were valuable for me since this is a relatively new topic and we have not had that in Hong Kong yet. The experience for learning the other subjects were great too because lecturers sometimes illustrated the concepts with German companies as examples and talked about the financial atmosphere in Germany as well, which enabled me to learn more about the country and its culture.

Talking about the learning environment, learning was not just listening to what the lectures said and making notes, which was common feature in Asia. In this university, students usually asked question when they had any problems with the teaching materials. Some of the questions even related the teaching materials with the reality or other area that we have learnt before. Though these may not be related to the exam, I really enjoyed attending lectures like we were discussing with but not just listening to the professors.

Finally, the events and activities held by different student organizations were also worth to participate. I have participated to some parties and events like movie night and day trips organized by VISUM and the Business School. These events opened my horizon and I was able to make some new friends. In the meanwhile, I participated some sports programs provided by the Institute for Sport, which I had chances to exercising myself and learning new sports skills.

Therefore, I enjoy studying in the University of Mannheim very much. I could say that during this few months, what I gained was much more than just knowledge and skills taught from the lectures, which is what “studying in the university” really means.