In this post, our new student blogger Adnan says hello.

Me and my new fellow students (photo by A. Khan)

Hello, I am Adnan Khan. I was born and grew up in Lahore, which is the largest city in the second largest Province of Pakistan. I did my Bachelor’s in Environmental Sciences from Lahore and then moved to Finland, where I did a Master’s in General Toxicology and Environmental Health Risk Assessment. Last year I moved to Germany and started learning the German language. In September, I moved to Landau as I was accepted for the MSc Ecotoxicology program.

The Master’s program here at the University of Koblenz-Landau is really exciting. The thing that I like the most about it is the AMEO (Applied Module at External Organisations), an internship every student has to do at an external organization where we have to apply the knowledge we gained during our studies.

Finding an accommodation and a job in Landau was a bit tricky: if you are planning to take admission in the Ecotoxicology Master’s program then I would advise you to apply for a room in student dorms and also look for private rooms on the internet as early as possible. Moreover, if you are interested in finding a job outside the university, it helps if you can speak a little bit of German.

After everything was set, on the 4th October my Landau experience started with the Welcome Days. During our first week, all the new International students enrolled at the University, and created their University email and library accounts. We also met with our MSc program coordinators and they gave us an introduction about the MSc program and the timetable for our first semester. We got to know the other international students during joint lunches at the University cafeteria and had a nice guided city tour in the evening. During the next few days, we had seminars about the public transport in Germany and German as a foreign language. During the second week, we had further seminars for instance about German culture. During the third week, we met our German class fellows (we are a total of 40 students who started the MSc program this semester and almost half of them are German students) and had the official welcome ceremony. Our lectures then started in the last week of October. Our timetable is not really packed as we have a maximum of two lectures per day but we are not getting bored since every lecture requires considerable extra time for instance to prepare homeworks.

I will keep you up to date about my experiences during my time in Landau and if you have any questions regarding these or issues with accommodation and jobs, don’t hesitate to contact me via e-mail.

All the best

Adnan