An Interview with Nishil Shah.

Crossing Domains sat down with Nishil Shah, an international Bachelor of Information Management student, to talk about life at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology and his experiences in Poland so far.

C.D: Hi Nishil, please tell us about your background and why you decided to apply to the Polish Japanese Academy.

N.S: Okay, so my name is Nishil Shah, and I come from India. My background at the Polish Japanese-Academy is in Information Management, where I study on the bachelors. My first choice was the Polish Japanese Academy because a friend of mine graduated from here in 2018. He gave some great feedback, saying it was a very good university if you want to study computer science. So I chose the academy, and don’t regret it!

C.D: …and how long have you been here in Poland?

N.S: I have been here for three years now, this September….

C.D: Oh and just a quick question, because I moved here a year and a half ago, so I’m just wondering, how’s your Polish?

N.S: My Polish is not so good. I would say it’s at the A2 level. I understand a lot of it, but when it comes to speaking, it’s very difficult because the pronunciation is very hard. When I look at the words, I think like okay, I can pronounce this, but when it comes to pronunciation, it’s very difficult.

C.D: Yeah, I completely sympathise and everything gets sort of stuck in my mouth too. So you’re studying Information Management, and you’ll be graduating this year. Is that correct? And how is the experience so far? What have the highs and lows been? What has been something that really stood out for you, like a teaching approach or a specific subject that maybe you hadn’t come into contact with before?

N.S: So I will graduate in January 2023. When I came to the university, to be honest, I didn’t really feel like part of a family, like I did when I was in India. Before I came here I thought the people were very strict. But this changed when I got to know the teachers and professors better.

I also know the dean, personally. So I got to know that they’re not so strict and are in fact very open and helpful. There’s one teacher that stands out for me a lot. She was my calculus teacher, Eva. She helped me throughout my time here and with all sorts of different things. If I didn’t understand something, like the Polish law, she used to always say, “okay, you can come to me and I will help you understand”. She was there throughout, even the director of PJAIT helped me with documents when there was no one else. So I feel like family now. It’s wonderful, really.

C.D: What do you what do you want to do with your studies? Do you think you’ll stay in Poland? What sort of jobs would you like? Would you maybe study a Masters?

N.S: So right now I’m doing an internship in Poland with TECHBASE Group. They have also been very helpful throughout everything, especially the CEO Malgorzata Dębogórska, who has helped me grow and given me many opportunities. She has even she showed me different types of Polish culture, I always appreciate to have support from her.

I even had to change cities to work for TECHBASE Group, from Warsaw to Gdansk, and they helped me with all of this too. They really made me feel at home, because when you change cities, you obviously change everything, even the culture of the place.

During the first year that I worked with them they really helped me and didn’t make me feel like there was a huge distance between the two cities. My satisfaction levels, from the internship and the university, are the highest they can be! And about a Masters, I really don’t know how things will go because it’s still two years from now. Currently, I just know that I will be in Poland for next two years, that’s for sure.

C.D: Did the Polish Japanese Academy help you find this internship?

N.S: Yes, I got my internship through PJAIT and it was very helpful that the university did this. But there are some cons as well to studying here as well. I really feel like there aren’t many social events for foreigners. So when it comes to these types of meetings, it’s very difficult to meet other foreign students. And we’re the people who leave everything behind; our families, friends, everything, so we can go abroad and study. So when we get here, we really need some kind of events that bring everyone together.

I told myself that university I will find friends and will be able do something, and so on. But in our university, it was not like that. Although it is developing now, it was not like that when I came in 2018. It was more like 90% studies and 10% was social events. And that 10% was more focused towards Polish students, so there was no one that I’m could really speak English with. It was very difficult for me to communicate. But now I can communicate in Polish, so things are improving.

However Marta Myszewska, from the Promotional Department, and I have plans for the future (I’d also like to thank Marta for all her help over the years). We are thinking that there could be more social events where foreigners will feel like part of the PJAIT family. So they wouldn’t feel like they’re only coming to the university to study, but that they coming here to be social too. This means there should be more English speaking social events, especially since there are so many non-Polish students at the academy now.

C.D: How has it been, these last three years in Poland? What was it like moving from India to Poland?

N.S: When I came first time to Poland I didn’t find a lot different because I come from Mumbai, which is the economic capital of India, and it is also very developed. And Warsaw is also very developed, comparative to other cities in the country. I learned one thing from Poland, I would say, and that is time management. They really, really, really care about time a lot like here. If something lasts 15 minutes, they are very sharp about that 15 minutes. No one is late and no one is early. It’s exactly 15 minutes. Good time management is very important and I really like that here. I also appreciate the way they communicate. People are very adaptable here too, and they go with the change. Now I’m moving around in Poland a lot, so I will tell you my experience maybe later on when I go to one of the other cities. But I can say one thing for sure, whichever the city you are in Poland, people are very good at managing things.

C.D: And how have you found Polish food?

N.S: Polish food? I have eaten Pierogi but just the veggie ones because I’m strictly vegetarian, I don’t eat anything else. So I haven’t tried a lot of other foods.

C.D: And how have you found the people of Poland?

N.S: So when I first came to Poland in 2018, the people were not really open, but our university always was. Our university really welcomes foreigner students. They don’t make you feel like an outsider. But when it came to outside the university, it was not such a good experience at the start, because people were not so open. But now, people are developing a lot and they seem more adapted to foreigners.

But there is one thing which I don’t really like about Poland is that sometimes the people don’t even try to speak English. I think they don’t try to communicate with other people because they are scared, I would say, to speak English. So that’s the only thing I feel. And when it also comes to my job, my coworkers are excellent. They’re from all over Poland and are all very generous.

C.D: What advice do you have for future foreign students?

N.S: So for future foreign students, I have two pieces of advice. That if you’re coming to Poland, and if you are going to choose the Polish-Japanese Academy, be open: don’t be a closed person. Because if you’re a closed person, you will not enjoy Poland for sure. You have to be open. And the second piece of advice is always keep your mind as diverse as possible. So you have to think about two or three things at a time. Because in Poland, it is very difficult to focus on just one particular thing, you have to be very diverse.

C.D: Okay, well, I think we’ve discussed a lot, would you like to add anything? Is there a specific story that you think is interesting and you would like to tell people?

N.S: I would like to tell one story. To be honest, I don’t know if many students would go through this and would experience such a thing. But if they go through our university there will always be help. So, my visa was expiring and I had to renew it. I didn’t have two key documents though, which I had to get from the academy. But for some reason the document was delayed by 14 days, yet the next day I had to give in my visa for renewal. And if I didn’t show the documents I couldn’t renew. So basically, I would have had to go back to India if I couldn’t do it.

These documents could only be issued by the director of the Polish-Japanese Academy, or from our main Dean. So the Dean was out of Poland and the director was only coming into the academy for meetings. He had just five minutes to spare, but he called me while I was waiting and listened to my problem. He then immediately prepared the documents on the spot. This was amazing. And after that I said I would never leave this university.

This meant I didn’t have to go back to India, and it was after only being at the academy for around 6 months! He’s a very lovely man. He sat down with me (and I was very much in a rush), and I was very stressed, but he gave me some water and he said that I shouldn’t stress and I’ll get my documents. This was a huge help and a great experience.

C.D: Thank you, Nishil, for talking to us. And good luck with everything!

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