I’ve lived in Singapore for the last 11 weeks and I still have 9 more weeks to go in Asia. Only one month left of school and the most exciting part is coming; travel around South-East-Asia. During the last months, I’ve met so many wonderful people from all around the globe. I’m glad to say that I have a friend in almost every country of the world. I’ve also experienced Singapore good taste for food. The good things about the lifestyle here is that you don’t cook, therefore you don’t have dishes and you don’t buy big groceries.

I’m studying business at Singapore Management University. The first challenge was the language barrier. Not only it was my first time having my lessons in English but on top of that, Singaporeans speak Singlish. Singlish is very different in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary. On the first day, I felt like people weren’t talking English, but Mandarin or Indian dialects. The exchange brought me a different business point of view, talking about ASEAN countries instead of North American. Interesting fact to know, SMU has a gym and a rooftop pool if you need breaks from the library.

SMU, to be honest, is similar to my home university in many ways. First, the workload is the same and the time organisation as well. I’m used to have few hours of classes and then a lot of homework and projects to do by my own. There are two main differences. First, Singaporeans spend a lot of time in the library compared to people from HEC, almost from opening to closing 7 days out of 7. Second, in Singapore, they have this unique concept called class participation. I hope you’re not shy and you’re listening if you’re coming to SMU because teachers are directly asking you questions and the class participation is graded.

Maude, from HEC Montreal (Canada), currently on exchange at Singapore Management University

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