My Erasmus+ Mobility for studies at ESADA: Anna-Riika Jatsa, EKA (Estonia)

Anna-Riika Jatsa, Product Design student at ESTONIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS (Estonia)

Erasmus+ Mobility for studies at ESADA from February to June 2023.

I am a second-year product design student, and I chose Granada for my Erasmus. My friend and I chose this city because of our love for Spain. I had developed a passion for the Spanish language as well, and I spent a lot of time studying it before coming to Granada. Also, the thought of being in Spain instead of Estonia for the coldest months seemed really nice. My personal reasoning was that I wanted to expand my knowledge of product design overall and do something that wasn't directly related to digital design.

At ESADA, we first received a warm welcome with churros and got a small tour of Granada, which was a great first experience. We got information on how the classes are built and how the whole system works. It was actually quite similar to EKA, as we also do project-based lessons and focus on the project at hand in each individual subject. One thing that was really different was the dossier format. I had to do a lot of work and have discussions with my coursemates to fully understand what we needed to do, and even then I felt like others knew how to get it right a lot better than me. In the end, I am happy that we had to make dossiers because it was satisfying to see all the work I did put together in one big document.

As the classes started, some minor problems arose, mainly the language barrier. Even though I spent a lot of time learning Spanish in Estonia, it was not quite enough as all of the classes were in Spanish, so I had to ask my coursemates for a lot of help. One more thing that was difficult to get used to was the fact that we worked mainly with industrial design and did physical projects, which was something I did not do a lot of. Back at my home university, we made mostly apps, websites, games, etc. Still, I got a lot of experience in a big field of subjects, did a ton of research about eco design and packaging, and worked with different materials in different techniques. The tool I am most happy about learning is Blender. I am grateful because it will be very useful in the future since I want to do game design.

Granada itself was extremely beautiful, and I took advantage of it as much as I could. My residence was quite far from ESADA, but I challenged myself to walk everywhere I went. That was not an issue for me because I loved seeing the mountains, especially the Sierra Nevada, as I walked to school and back. I loved Albaicín and walked up there a lot at night. I also visited the local parks as much as I could and even climbed some trees with a friend (not sure if that was legal, but they can’t punish me for it anymore). The nightlife was also really crazy, people were in the streets at night partying even on weekdays, which is not a phenomenon you encounter in Estonia at all. My friend and I tried to take advantage of that too, and we rarely stayed in on weekends, except for when it was a dossier day.

In the final week of staying in Granada, there was Corpus week, which included a huge fair. It was really fun, and I spent a lot of money on rides. I feel like I got really lucky that I got friends at ESADA who spoke English well because in my residence, almost no one spoke English, so they stuck with their own group and the only conversations we were able to hold were really basic. In the end, I am really grateful for this opportunity, and the four and a half months I spent in Granada made me happy. I genuinely recommend everyone who has the possibility to take advantage of it and go.