My Introducción - but Who are YOU?

Hello! My name is María and I grew up between Cataluña and Aragón, which are two regions from Spain! Right now I’m pursuing a Bachelor's in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, Economy) at Charles University, Czechia, soon start my third year here. Nice to meet all of you!

High School in Spain

I’ll begin by explaining how high school in Spain is structured: it lasts six years, so you study from 12 to 18 years old. The first four years are called Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, ESO for short, meaning secondary obligatory education.

However, the last two years are not mandatory - they're called Bachillerato (Spanish Baccalaureate), and that's where you choose your subjects to specialize in. You choose from multiple fields - biosanitary, technology, social sciences or humanities, audiovisual or artistic. You only do these two years if you want to access university directly. It’s not mandatory - students can do vocational training and then access university, or start working.

As for me, I choose social sciences and humanities as my Bachillerato. It's a very competitive and stressful time for high school students because of how Spanish universities accept their students - by your grades only. You make an average of all your grades in those two years of specialised studying, and get your score. You don’t get recommendation letters, motivation letters, extracurriculars - you’re just a grade, a number.

My Side of The Story: I Defied the System

Fortunately, I didn’t have to go through that. I still took my exams, but I was pressure-free because I decided in my last year of high school that I wanted to study abroad.

I was never satisfied with just doing schoolwork, and I've always had an interest in involving myself in different types of projects. I participated in a lot of MUNs and EYPs - which is the European Youth Parliament, the equivalent of MUN, but for the European Parliament. I was also affiliated with a political party and did a lot of activities with them.

In my school, we also participated in a project. It was a mandatory subject, where we did a social project throughout the last two years of high school. In my case, we basically taught older people from our neighbourhood how to use their phones; we did small courses and went to civic centers to teach them how to use WhatsApp, manage their bank accounts. I was also a student body representative, and I am overall very content with my extracurriculars, and I believe they represent my personality very well!

My Study Method (Try at Your Risk)

For me, in order to study, I had to be stressed about it, so I would fill my schedule with things in order to have very little time to study and actually focus due to the stress. If I didn’t study at that moment, I wouldn’t study later because I had MUNs, EYP, party duties, visits to the Prime Minister. It's not healthy and I don’t advise anyone to do it, but by putting a lot on my plate, I actually dedicated the little time I had more fully.

For example, I knew that if I cleared my entire evening to study one subject, I wasn’t going to focus. I’d think, “I still have two hours,” and end up on my phone or read a couple of chapters. However, if I dedicated an hour to studying, I knew that because I only blocked one hour to do that, I really had to focus. I still practice this method, but the good thing about university is that schedules are much more flexible.

While as a student, on Fridays, I would sleep throughout the day. Then at night, from Friday to Saturday, I would study all night in a 24-hour study room we have in Prague. It was actually very calm and quiet, and for me, it was really relaxing. Then I would sleep on Saturday and fix my sleep schedule on Sunday and catch up on everything I hadn't managed to do during the week.

OK, but WHAT do Philosophers Actually Do?

People often think that philosophers don’t have jobs, that they live under bridges and tell others how to live. It’s not true - all political leaders and people who actually run the world need to have knowledge about philosophy, and they have advisers who think about these things professionally.

If you want a more practical example, look at the people who deal with the morality of issues like abortion, euthanasia, or gender changes. All of them have studied philosophy - or at least, they need to. They need to be trained in resolving moral questions and analysing problems from different perspectives and angles.

When you go to university, you learn from the best in the field. You get opportunities to exercise those discussions and write papers with experts supervising and debating things with your classmates. I believe university is not just about acquiring knowledge - it’s also about practising soft skills and perfecting how you express and apply what you’ve learned.

I decided to study philosophy abroad because of the competitiveness in high school. It also made sense because I wanted to go into diplomacy and pursue an international career - like working for the European Union. I knew that the earlier I started moving into an international environment and interacting with people from different cultures, the better it would be for me. I feel it also gives me a strong sense of my own identity and independence.

Why Czechia?

When choosing which universities to apply for, I didn’t go by country, but by university’s reputation and what the program offered. Charles University is internationally regarded as a very good university (top 1.2% in the world), and the program that appealed to me most was PPE - Politics, Philosophy, and Economics - because it offered the interdisciplinary approach I was seeking.

I would advise people not to choose a country based on reputation. Don’t say, “I want to study in Germany or France.” Go for the university itself. That broadens your horizons even more - which can be terrifying. You have thousands of universities in Europe - it’s so big. The website I mainly used was this one: https://www.study.eu/.

What I did was I went through a lot of lists of universities in all the countries in the EU because I didn’t want to leave the continent. I applied to maybe four or five universities, and I got admitted to three of them. One of them was PPE at Charles University in Prague, and I ended up here.

The Application System

Charles has a rolling application system and they accept applications from February until June/July. (https://cuni.cz/UKEN-1.html)

Also, it was very beneficial that they didn’t ask for my state exams. By the time I was taking my Bachillerato, I had already been accepted, so I could take my exams without stress.

They asked me for a CV, a motivation letter, and my academic transcript. I didn’t have any interviews or specific entrance exams for Charles. I didn’t hire anyone to help me write my essays or anything like that; I prepared everything myself, wrote every letter, every assignment. I believe that as long as the application is unique and truthfully shows that person’s personality - through all the essays - I think it’s worth it.

For my motivation letter, I don’t think I had any outstanding extracurriculars, it’s not like I had any publications or had done any conferences; I started off by sort of telling a story—how I got into politics and why I wanted to study this. After that, while following the guidelines they give you, I wrote about my previous experience in the field, mainly my activity in EYP for two years.

Then I had another paragraph saying: “Charles University is where I want to study because I have these goals, and I feel like Charles is the place for me to achieve them.” I also researched the courses a little bit and I wrote that I would like to specialize in philosophy and politics. I also added about why I think it would be beneficial to study abroad in an international environment and that I would like to go on Erasmus, too.

I ended: “Charles University is the place for me, not only because of the great academic opportunities that it offers, but because of the ethics and values we share. I have great ambitions, and Charles can help me transform them into a reality.” I think it’s mostly a combination of a personal statement, an academic interest essay and a “Why us?” essay.

I Just Love Philosophy!

I’ve loved it since I was a kid because I love to think. Philosophy is not just Plato’s Cave; the core of modern philosophy is about why things happen. Politics and philosophy are tightly knit together. Politics, international relations, security studies - they give you the tools, the map, but you need philosophy to establish the goal of the map - to mark the X on it.

At the end of the day, you think, “We’re going to reduce nuclear weapons,” or “We’re going to improve migration routes.” Okay, but why? Why are we doing this? Because we want a safer world? Okay, but why? And for whom? Is it fair? Is it not?

There are all these big questions that politics can’t answer.

AI in Humanities - Should I Worry?

We actually have classes and conferences about this.

The fact that we still talk about AI is a good sign for the humanities; I don’t think the humanities will be thrown away by AI, mainly because AI can’t think for itself. The proof is that when ChatGPT is asked to do math equations or operations, it sometimes gets them wrong. Why? Because the information it pulls from the internet is wrong.

If you think about society right now, one might say there’s a lack of empathy, maybe of values, of morality. It feels like money can buy everything, and the bad guys always win. Why? Because for the last few years, we’ve been raised in a context where the only things that get praised are: people who do economics, people who make money, people who are “successful.”

However, that’s great. Mathematics, science, medicine - these are essential. The quality of life got better because of those things. But philosophy, poetry, the arts - these are things that are necessary for human beings. These are the ways we express ourselves and what sets us apart from machines.

We’re individuals with thoughts, feelings, and critical thinking, and the rise of AI, essentially, erases that ability to think. For example, I was talking to some first-years and they were struggling to write a text because they often used ChatGPT to get through essays.

Writing and thinking are like muscles. You need to train them. And if you stop training it because someone - or something - is thinking for you, that muscle stops functioning correctly. That’s the threat of AI. Not “Oh, I don’t want to write a report, I’ll let ChatGPT do it,” but that we’ll be presented with a situation in life, and we won’t know what to do, what to think about it because we’ll have lost the habit of thinking our way through it.

Budgeting (& Financial Aid)

I didn’t apply for financial aid. The Czech education system is free, but if you study in English, it’s not.

Before accepting a university offer, I agreed with my parents to give me €700/month, which is the equivalent of the Czech minimum wage. With that, I had to manage my accommodation, groceries, and any other expenses. In Czechia, I pay around €200 a month for my dorm, which - compared to the housing market in Spain or even in Czechia - is very good.

A very cool feature of Charles University is that if you’re in the top 10% regarding grades, your tuition gets significantly reduced. It costs €3,500/semester, so it’s €7,000/year, and since I’m in 10%, I only have to pay €3,000/year. If you’re in the next top 10%, it’s €5,000.

Now my parents are able to save up for my Master’s degree.

Reality of Work-Life Balance

In order to fully dedicate myself to internships, extracurricular activities, getting straight A’s - for the fee reductions and scholarships - I need to be able to give it my all. I don’t have time for a job. Students who were straight-A students and then get part-time or full-time jobs often fall to C’s or D’s. Obviously, it’s very draining to hold your grades and work, and that’s fine - you can still get your degree with a D. But you won’t get scholarships. So there’s this constant struggle: do I get a job, or do I get a scholarship?

Culture Shocks as a Spaniard

I come from a culture where everybody is very close - physically and emotionally; we are very expressive. I haven’t seen someone cry here in two years. Meanwhile, I’m crying in the metro every two weeks. Or laughing really hard, for example some nationalities have a really loud laugh, while others prefer to just smile or not, even at football matches, where everything is really intense!

It created a dissonance which influenced how I thought about myself. Back home, I knew myself inside my culture and through people who knew me, so if I made a mistake, my friends would say, “Okay, I know you. This is not you, is just a mistake.” And we’d move on the next day. But when you move to a new country and everybody is new - nobody knows you - people form impressions of you really fast.

That really stressed me out, and the first few months were hard. Suddenly, I was being perceived through the lens of being loud because I just acted how I would normally in Spain. I had never thought of myself through those labels, and it created this dissonance between who I thought I was and who everyone else thought I was.

I think you have to be tolerant to live in such an international setting. You do find people who are tolerant and open-minded and willing to listen, but at the same time, a lot of people are fresh out of high school and many of them have never had prolonged interactions with people from other cultures and have limited life experience. However, the community was very welcoming. Of course, any change may come with homesickness and moments of doubting your decisions. But I think, at the end of the day, it teaches you really strong lessons about being fine with yourself and building a strong sense of self.

How I Overcame Social and Cultural Challenges

There’s a lot of crying involved.

There are a lot of times when you doubt yourself. It’s a process. There’s not one thing you can do to suddenly be fine. You have to live through it in order to not feel like that anymore.

The solution is to know yourself. Be confident that you are the person you think you are. And it doesn’t matter if person A, B, or C says you’re something else - because you know who you are, and you don’t need external approval. However, yes, you can listen to their opinions. You can say, “Maybe I could do this better,” or “Maybe they’re wrong.” There’s nothing wrong with reflecting. But at the end of the day, you have to be strong in your identity.

Day in My Life!

Programs at Charles are very flexible, in the sense that you have certain requirements for graduation and certain requirements to not get kicked out. In order to not get kicked out, you need at least 36 credits every year, and you need to not fail a mandatory subject twice.

In order to graduate, you need 180 credits, to have completed all of your mandatory courses and, depending on your organization, X number of credits from elective courses in general and also related to your specialization. Every semester you take certain mandatory courses. In the first year, it's more regulated because you take the recommended mandatory subjects and then you pick a few electives. Same with the second semester, third, and fourth.

In your fourth semester, you have to declare your specialization. So in the case of PPE, whether you're specializing in philosophy and politics, philosophy and economics, or politics and economics - related to that, you need a certain amount of subjects from that specialization.

So, I have studied economics as my mandatory subject, but I have, for example, never taken an economics elective because I don't like it; I’ve taken electives in politics and philosophy. Moreover, we don’t have a set schedule like in high school, which can be both amazing and a burden.

At the beginning of the semester, you pick your classes. Each class has a specific time and place, but your daily routine isn’t always the same. For example, not all classes start at 8 a.m., and you don’t always have a lunch break - some days I have no classes at all. Last semester, I had five classes back-to-back on the same day, from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. - only ten-minute breaks in between.

Usually, there’s a format of lectures and seminars. The lecture is more about sitting and taking notes while the professor talks. The seminar is for active discussion. Smaller groups - maybe 10 to 15 people - where you debate topics from the readings or the lecture.

Some professors also do debates in class, but we’re not graded on public speaking. So there are a lot of ways to explore public speaking, political discussion, and creative work outside the classroom. Inside the classroom, not everyone wants to be there - maybe 10 out of 60 students are actually passionate about the subject.

Home and Homesickness

I don’t think home is just one thing. I see “home” as my home country, my family, my small town, my friends back there.

But home can also be my friend group here. Going to our usual booth in our usual restaurant after class - that’s home too. Riding the metro and hearing the same sounds - that can feel like home. So for me, home is about experiences, it’s not just a place or a person. It’s what you live through in that place, or with that person or group.

On one hand, I feel at home in a lot of places. On the other hand, I’m never fully home - because pieces of home are always somewhere else.

Opportunities I Had!

When I was in high school, we didn’t really have internships. In Spain, internships are usually agreements between a faculty and a business, so you can’t really access them unless you’re a student of that university.

What I did was just do my extracurriculars. Through EYP, I traveled a lot, met a lot of people, and talked to others who shared my interest in politics, because I was the only one in my class who wanted to study that. I talked to people already in university, already studying politics, and I got their advice: what it’s like to study abroad, what it’s like at their universities.

Also, I’m a member of a political party, so that helped me see how things work from the inside. I got to know a little more about what politics actually looks like and whether I want to work in it, go into diplomacy, or do civil service somewhere else.

In university, it’s better. There are more internships targeted toward students, but interning isn’t something that will change your career overnight. Maybe you learn actual knowledge, but it’s more about connecting with people.

I interned at GLOBSEC. I got to know a lot of people and worked with some interesting ones. That might help me get another internship, maybe long-term, at the Institute of International Relations next year. I already have a contact there and my department interviews people, and I have their contacts, and they know me.

In university, unless you’re very lucky or work very hard and intentionally, you’re not going to have a super impactful project or something that’s just yours. I have a friend who studies and works on national TV as a sports commentator for the national team. Why? Because she worked really hard, and that was her goal; studying was secondary.

Unless you say, “I will create something and take full responsibility for it,” you’ll mostly do short-term things. I was a speaker at a conference, I interned at GLOBSEC, but those were short term. It’s not as exciting as you think—it’s just networking, which is important too.

You’re expected to study full time. You can’t do everything. You’re laying the foundation to change the world; you’re not there yet. You have to go through the middle step: know the people, know the circles they move in, know the conversations being had. That’s what university helps you do.