Hello again! As promised, here is another blog post for your reading enjoyment. This post I want to focus on something that I have found to really be a bit of a struggle to deal with while abroad: that is, applying for and interviewing for co-op jobs. Since I am technically a pre-junior in a 5-year 3 co-op plan of study, while abroad I am working on my next co-op. As A-round starts in November, if you are also going to be going on co-op the terms after your study abroad term, you will also have to deal with the co-op process from abroad, which does complicate things a bit. Therefore I want to give some advice and tips that might make it a bit easier, which I've had to learn the hard way.

First of all, I should preface this by saying that I would not recommend skipping out on A-round just because you are abroad. While being 4,000 or more miles away from campus can make for example, on campus interviews impossible, this isn't a reason to pass up job opportunities, since B-round jobs can be different or you can lose out on an A-round job you really liked.

That being said, it is important to keep track of all the dates and deadlines for approvals and such, like I mentioned in my previous post the time zone is important to keep in mind so you don't miss critical deadlines. Also, if you are coming off of a co-op prior to your term abroad, see if you can postpone your post-co-op meeting with your advisor until after you return from abroad, since again with the time zone difference it can be difficult to set up an appointment with them for a phone conference. My advisor was able to get me approved without doing the ES&P conference.

The biggest challenge though can be scheduling the interviews, since you are abroad you have less flexibility to schedule interviews. The important thing is to contact all of your potential employers that have granted your interview requests right away once you find out you've been granted an interview, and try to schedule the interviews after you know you will be home. If you are staying after the end of the semester this might be difficult. Some employers do prefer to have the interviews completed before they leave for the holidays, despite the interview period for off-campus interviews going until January. In this case, try to schedule as late as possible, or ask for a phone/skype interview.

You will probably be told by most people at Drexel that most employers are willing to do Skype interviews, however, none of the employers that I have been in contact with regarding scheduling my A-round interviews have wanted to do the interviews via skype, preferring instead to schedule in-person interviews. This decision is totally up to them, so while you should ask about it, be prepared for them to schedule an in-person interview instead.

If you are granted on-campus interviews, you will not be able to make these since they usually take place the first week of December, and you will still be abroad then for sure. It is of course imperative that you contact any employers who are doing on-campus interviews to let them know you can't make those interviews since you are abroad. Most employers will be understanding, but again it is up to them whether they will reschedule with you when you're back or not. If you're having problems with this contacting your co-op advisor is advisable.

You may find a similar situation regarding leaving co-op early to start your term abroad (since most schools, Mannheim included) are semesters and begin before the end of co-op in late August. Some employers will be willing to let you leave early, some are not. The best thing to do is talk to your employer as soon as you know you'll be going abroad so they know.

Hopefully this information is useful! Until next time, I'll leave you with a picture of the Frauenkirche in Dresden! Auf wiedersehen!

Hello again! With the busyness of the last few weeks abroad and doing some final traveling, I realize I've gotten a bit behind on these blog posts, but expect to see a bunch coming the next few days/weeks. In this post, I want to talk a bit about keeping in touch with what is going on back home, but in particular, some advice for keeping on top of some things that need to be done for Drexel.

Despite the fact that you're abroad, Drexel is still running as normal, and as such, there are things you need to continue to do for your education there while you're abroad. One of the things is making sure you log on and register for classes once your course registration opens as it usually does. It is important to keep in mind the time-difference of 6 hours (although there is a week around registration time where Germany moves its clock back before the U.S. does and the difference is then only 5 hours, so be aware of this) when logging in to register, since registration usually opens at 7am, at least thats what I've always had. But there's no need to get up early and register if yours opens at 7am as well, as this is 1pm in Germany. However if you're in class at this time it would still be wise to login and register, as you don't want to forget and then lose out on classes for your next term.

This seems obvious, but I think its worth mentioning, as it is easy to get caught up in your travels and forget that course registration is coming up, especially since the registration here at Mannheim is so different from Drexel's, since Drexel class registration takes place in the middle of the term prior to the term you're registering for, whereas Mannheim almost doesn't have registration (more discussion about this in one of my posts from back in September).

Also, as I've found out, it is important to keep on top of your billing and financial aid as well. Again, while you are over here having a great time studying abroad, Drexel still wants to get paid, so you need to make sure you can facilitate this however you normally would. Also, its good to periodically check on your account and things to make sure everything is in order, since it can be harder to get in contact with people should a problem arise, since you can't show up at Drexel Central to talk to someone, and calling can get expensive. Just like with the course registration, it is easy to forget that you have financial obligations with Drexel, which can result in a not so nice surprise.

In a future blog post, I will talk about the other big thing you need to accomplish for Drexel while abroad- co-op - but that will need its own post.

Until next time, I'll leave you with a picture from Hamburg, Germany from a couple weeks ago. Tchüß!

Willkommen züruck to another blog post! While I have tried to focus most of my blog posts up to this point on things other than traveling, I do want to talk about some of the places I have traveled in Europe during my time here, and specifically to highlight some of the places that are a few hours from Mannheim, but I would recommend going to for future study abroad students.

From Mannheim, thanks to its connections with major rail lines going all over Germany, it is very possible to travel all over Germany and Europe for that matter, quickly and comfortably. While the high-speed trains aren't exactly cheap, there are ways to get less expensive fares such as buying your tickets in advance to get saver fares, or by getting a BahnCard 25 or 50, which saves you 25% or 50% off of the posted fares. Deutsche Bahn offers what they call a Probe Bahn card, which is a trial version of the discount card that is good for 4 months, which is perfect for doing a semester abroad. I got the Bahn Card Probe 50, which will basically pay for itself, as it was 95 Euros. 50% off of my fare to Paris back in September was a total round trip price of 151 Euros, so you can see that by saving another 151 Euros off the full, non-discounted, the card paid for itself.

With that in mind, Paris is definitely a place to visit especially if you have a long weekend with either Fridays or Mondays off classes. The train ride from Mannheim takes about 3/3.5 hours and can be done with either TGV or ICE from Mannheim direct with no transfers. TGV and ICE share the services, so for example, I bought the ticket with Deutsche Bahn, which was perfectly valid on the French TGV that I took on the way there, and people had tickets from SNCF (French national train company) on the ICE I took on the way back.

While Paris isn't terribly far, there are also a whole bunch of places to visit within Germany that you can use ICE to get to and save money on them if you have a Bahn Card. Generally, the farther the trip, the more it will cost, so Berlin for example won't be cheap, but you can get it much more affordable with the Bahn Card. Berlin is certainly well worth a visit, as there are tons of things to do there, and you can certainly find something that interests you, whether it be history, art, music, entertainment, etc. The 5 hour train ride isn't too bad either, as the ICE trains are quite comfortable.

Munich is another famous German city that is a must-see, especially to get some insights into some famous German cultural attractions such as Oktoberfest and the automotive industry, as Munich is the location of the BMW Welt, BMW Museum, Headquarters, and Factory. Munich is about 3 hours by train.

There are a number of other German cities that are really worth visiting as well, many of which are within a couple hours of Mannheim by train, including Stuttgart with its Mercedes-Benz and Porsche museums, Frankfurt, with a typical German altstadt but also modern skyscrapers, Cologne with its waterfront on the Rhine and the enormous Cathedral, and Dusseldorf, another city situated right on the Rhine River with a typical German old city.. With ICE, Stuttgart and Frankfurt are just a half hour ride away; Cologne and Dusseldorf about 1.5 hours and 2 hours respectively.

After all of that, if you have time to visit Hamburg, this is also a great city in Northern Germany important for its role as a major port, about 4.5 hours or so via ICE.

While it is important to study while you're abroad, I hope that some of these suggestions will be useful in planning some trips to other cities, as this is one of the many fun aspects of studying abroad, and really helps you get a deeper understanding of your host country.

Attached: a picture from Cologne.