A Go Global trip to Paris can be glamorous — if you can get over the stress. Photo courtesy Danielle Pacheco
Stylish Parisiennes trip past me on red heels. I let the excited French babble of the Champs-Elysées flood my senses as I bite into a macaroon from LaDurée. But instead of caramel à la fleur de sel, I get only the bitter taste of stress.
My exchange trip to a university in Paris during my third year was hands-down the best experience of my life. I learned a new culture, a new way of life and a lot about myself, and I wish everybody was lucky enough to have this opportunity. But there was one huge negative: while my friends were getting help on everything from their exchange advisors back home, I was getting emails from Go Global aimed at recruiting next year’s students. In fact, once I was accepted into my partner university, I received zero information or help from Go Global until my return — and upon my return, the process of getting my transfer credits took almost a year. Why did I put my trust and $363 in an organization that would so totally abandon me in a foreign country?
Go Global manages exchanges with universities everywhere, which is great. They have several different advisors; one specializes in Europe and French Polynesia, for example, and another in Asia and Latin America. Needless to say, having one person specializing in several continents didn’t lead to a lot of specialization. Students were told from the get-go that we were responsible for figuring out university websites, courses, accommodation, you name it.
Why did I put my trust and $363 in an organization that would so totally abandon me in a foreign country?”
I submitted my course requests in early March, and the website clearly stated that “transfer credit can take up to 16 weeks to process” — I should have my courses approved by June at the latest, right? Wrong. My courses were not approved until Aug. 31, five months after I submitted them. This effectively left me in third-year standing on the Student Service Centre for course selection in June, and I ended up having to beg my way into my required fourth-year courses. A staffer redundantly changed my standing for me manually — in October.
My transcript arrived from the host university in April. Go Global eventually processed it, months later, and through the wrong department. This unnecessarily delayed the process; plus, it meant I needed to make several trips later to the English department and waste their time individually approving my courses (which they did; they were very accommodating).
In addition to the mess created by sending my courses to be approved all over campus, there was also a massive delay in getting my transcript approved in the first place. In September all my courses were “tentatively finalized,” but there was still some kind of hold-up. I emailed Go Global again to see why my courses weren’t fully approved. It turned out that the transcript the Paris university had sent wasn’t detailed enough. Though everybody had apparently known about this since April, and Go Global, in fairness, had sent two unsuccessful emails to Paris asking for a new transcript, they failed to let me know that there was this hurdle to jump over before my credits could be approved.
I emailed Paris and a month later (quick, for France) the exchange advisor there found me an “adequate” transcript that would meet UBC standards. The question remains: why is Go Global sending students to a university whose transcripts they refuse to accept? If there was one thing they assured us of, it was that all our courses would transfer back to UBC; the only question was under which course code.
Within Go Global itself, it’s unclear where responsibility lies for the delays and numerous setbacks to the process. When I tried making an appointment, Go Global sent me to Arts Advising, and when I went to Arts Advising, the secretary gave me a slip of paper with her email address and told me she didn’t do “in-person.”
After 10 months of kicking and screaming at a brick wall, my courses were finally approved, and this January I managed to get enough of them transferred to the English department to help complete my degree. All I can say is that I hope it doesn’t take 11 months for everybody to complete this process. I will always encourage going on exchange, because it truly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Just consider yourself warned: don’t expect any help at all from Go Global after you have been selected for a university.
Danielle Pacheco is a fourth-year arts student.
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