Enjoying a Turkish burger in Tenerife!

Author: Daisy Rehbock | Major: International and Global Studies | Semester: Spring 2023

Hey there! My name is Daisy Rehbock and I’m currently wrapping up my spring semester 2023 in the beautiful city of Madrid located in the center of Spain. I’m an international studies major with minors in Spanish and gender studies in the lovely Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences but while I’m here in Madrid I’ve been taking classes at Universidad Nebrija.

As finals season approaches here at Nebrija, I figure I should address the most daunting topic of all college courses: tests and finals. At the Hispanic Studies program at Nebrija, which is what the majority of study abroad students studying there are in as it focuses on learning Spanish language and culture, your grades across the board have the same structure: 33% midterm/final, 33% attendance/participation, and 33% daily work/homework. These categories can obviously be changed according to class or teacher, but most of my courses followed this structure pretty closely, meaning that there was a midterm and final in the course that made up 33 percent of my final grade. As someone who’s major is majorly comprised of classes that require essays instead of tests that are taken in person, this component of my grade was a big shift for me from Arkansas to Nebrija. However, in the grand scheme of the grade, the tests were not huge portions of the final grade, and simply writing your notes by hand instead of typing and preparing for the week leading up to the exam can ensure success. While my classes were only for credit and will not affect my GPA at Arkansas, a major difference between Spain and the United States is the grading system and how each grade is interpreted by students, teachers, and future employers and graduate programs. While we have both a letter and number associated with our grades in the United States, Spain only uses numbers, with the scale being out of 10 instead of 100 for final grades. The major difference comes with what grades are viewed as acceptable and unacceptable in Spain. While a 6 or 7 may be cause for concern for many students in the United States, they are viewed as perfectly acceptable passing grades by Spaniards because 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s are very rarely given out by instructors. Thankfully for all the Americans studying abroad in Spain, in more recent years this tradition has begun to shift more towards the American grading scale, due to Spanish graduates struggling to land jobs in the United States due to their grades.

This month was very bittersweet as it contained many goodbyes to the friends I met abroad, with many leaving before me because Nebrija doesn’t end until pretty late May. However, the limited time we had left encouraged us to really explore the things that Madrid offered that we hadn’t yet seen and explored. This meant that my month was full of fun and exciting activities that only taught me more about culture and society in Spain. I spent many days in museums in my last month abroad, as the majority are free for students, and I felt that I would waste the incredible opportunity to see renowned Spanish art and architecture if I didn’t try to get to at least one museum a week during my last month in Madrid. In my last few weeks in Madrid made it to Museo Sorolla, Museo Cerralbo, and the National Museum of Romanticism. These not only contained beautiful art, but the first two were also once personal homes and contained elegant decorations from the families that once inhabited them. I would definitely recommend Museo Sorolla for any student studying abroad in Madrid that has an afternoon free.

Now that I’ve made it through my full semester in Madrid, I can confidently say that my entire college experience has been uplifted from my time studying abroad. I truly believe that a study abroad experience can double the enjoyment of any student’s college career, especially those who study any sort of international topic like international business, international studies, or a language. I do wish I was prepared for the timeline that Nebrija had for their admission and enrollment, for the fall semester leading up to my study abroad was quite stressful having to handle my visa on top of everything with Nebrija. With a study abroad be ready for a slower timeline, at least with European universities, as they handle admission and enrollment much later than we do at universities in the States. It wasn’t until a couple weeks before I headed to Spain that I even took my placement test and chose my classes, so try not to stress about this factor if you’re planning to study abroad in the future! The University of Arkansas has some incredible study abroad opportunities, so get out there and see the world Razorbacks!