To be honest this was one of the best experiences of my life so far, I met amazing people from different backgrounds, is a very well educated environment and you can learn so much from everyone and every interaction. In my personal experience, I had some issues with my Principal investigator, she didnt have a plan for me and wouldn't communicate either so it was difficult. But I had a direct supervisor who did everything in his power to help me learn as much as I could while I was there. KAUST provides the best environment for learning, and experiencing new things, is the safest place I've ever been and facilitates everything for personal and academic growth like laboratories and state of the art facilities to different courses and spaces to learn like language courses, art spaces and sport centers. I highly recommend this experience, I would encourage people to go, my only advice is to carefully look for a project you're interested in and try to contact someone from the laboratory before going so you have more information before arriving.
What was the most nerve-racking moment and how did you overcome it?
This was my first time leaving my country which came with many new challenges that I thought would be easy beforehand, so when I first arrived I felt really alone, lost, didn't know hoe things worked, and got really overwhelmed by the change and the new things. If this is your case, I would tell you to be patient with you and take your time to adapt, things will get better, you will make friends and understand how the new things work, take your time and enjoy the process. Meanwhile try to stay connected to people from your friends and family, be open to invitations and explore, KAUST is a very safe place so you can walk around and explore and nothing will happen to you.
Pros
- People
- New cultures
- Safety
Cons
- It depends on your lab
- the amex card given to VSRP has a lot of limitations, and often fails or is not accepted even at campus