Resume

Even after about five years, the impact of a foreign experience remains tangible in the personal and professional life of former students. The impact would seem to reinforce students’ coming-of-age experience on personal and professional skills, which appeared to be intertwined. Personally: greater self-knowledge, self-reliance, flexibility, social and communicative skills, personal relationships, an open and interested attitude (towards other cultures), knowledge of certain languages and cultures, intercultural sensitivity, and an international outlook. Professionally: cooperating and communicating with people from different cultures, an international perspective, acquiring language skills, and shaping career paths while at the same time creating an international professional network, development of self-reliance, flexibility, an open and interested attitude, acquiring self-knowledge, and job-specific skills. 

The former students interviewed within the framework of this study reflected on the impact of their Erasmus+ experience by means of a retrospective. They often did not have any concrete expectations beforehand and embarked on their stay abroad with an open mind. Most of them already had a fairly positive view of Europe and the world: the foreign experience served to reinforce it.