Erasmus has always been a thing I wanted to try. Unfortunately, my home university doesn’t offer a lot of places I would like to go to as an Erasmus student. Therefore, instead of going to study to Bulgaria, I decided to take the Erasmus traineeship in Sardinia.
The beginnings of a (long) journey
Let’s have a look at how it works. If you want to read how to get the internship and all about the paperwork, please skip to the ‘paperwork and all the boring stuff’ section of this blog post. Because I will ramble a bit before going to the actual specifics of what you ned to do for your Erasmus traineeship.
A year ago, I applied for a student exchange in Canada and when it didn’t work out because of my university, I was extremely disappointed. Therefore, this time I decided to do it on my own only. On the ErasmusIntern website, I chose a programme I was interested in and contacted the institution directly. I sent my cv and motivation letter and I got a positive reply.
Will I get confirmed?
After being confirmed by the Italian site (in my case University of Sassari), I filled out the Learning agreement saying what the traineeship will be about and what level of language I was required to be at. It took about a MONTH to get a signature from my Erasmus coordinator at my home university as the woman handling it did not know what to do. Once, she was even calling her colleague telling her she wasn’t sure if she could sign it. However, I didn’t give up. In October 2017 everything looked alright. But any time I would like to talk about the Erasmus traineeship grant I was told there is plenty of time to deal with that.
Just to be clear why the hell I am inserting all the dates, there are important for the story to be understood. At the end of March 2018, I got an email about my learning agreement not being legible. And after five months my university in Britain was requiring a new document. It took them half an year to get them read my learning agreement they signed! However, everything has a solution and if I can tell one thing, British people get annoyed quickly. Also, a quick call to British Council who is responsible for Erasmus in the UK helps.
The uni got another problem though. This time it was called: the Erasmus traineeship you chose is dangerous. Absurd, isn’t it? As it is Sardinia, not the Middle East this issue got sorted out as well.
And finally, here I was filling out the grant agreement and doing the Online Language Assessment in order to get my money. And after everything being signed, I could finally look forward to my trip to Sardinia.
Erasmus traineeship – paperwork and all the boring stuff
The Erasmus traineeship is available for any university student or a year after finishing it. The whole process is quite straightforward, it depends a lot at your home university how they can deal with it, how much experience they have and if everything goes smoothly.
I found my Erasmus traineeship on the erasmusintern.org website which is officialy recommended by the Erasmus plus. The organisations are inserting the job placements and you can search through them. Choose a country and a subject and you will be able to see a lot of offers. There are mostly contact details and documentation required for applying. Most of the time it is a cv, motivation letter or language certificate.
Learning agreement
If you have been accepted, the next step is a learning agreement. Those are two pages of very brief information about your job, name and other very basic info. You are filling out whether you want credits, or doing the internship volunteerly… The learning agreement needs to be signed by your university as well as the organisation you will be visiting. Even though it is recommended to have it before the mobility, you have up to 4 weeks to get the document after your arrival. This is kind of the moment when you need your Erasmus coordinator to sign it for you. It is also, in my opinion, the most difficult thing about it all.
Finances
Now comes in the game the Erasmus grant. Who doesn´t want money, right? For the Erasmus traineeship, you are able to get a bit of money to support you. However, even though the amounts differ, it will be around 400 euros/ month. The grant agreement is quite complicated, but it is just about reading carefully. You need to fill out your bank details, you will read about the conditions of receiving the grant and so on. There will be some conditions made by your university, but the only one required for all Erasmus participants is the Online Language Assessment. After completing that, you are good to go.
Just so you know, your home university will probably ask you to fill out more stupid documents such as risk assessment or who knows what. Well, just do it and start packing!
If you want to read more on my time in Sardinia where I did my Erasmus traineeship, click here for a full overview.