As a short bio about myself, I am Ahmet Kurnaz, 4th year student at FLE Department, METU – It still feels very strange to say 4th year student.
To begin with, I must state that it is my final year here at METU and you start thinking about what to do after graduation only when you come to the end of the journey of studying at METU. From this perspective, I started to plan my future a little bit earlier in the very beginning of my first year at university. So, what have I done so far? Let’s take a look…
When I was graduating from the high school, my dream was to have a high score to enter Boğaziçi University. Indeed, I had a language score to be placed 89th in the YGS-LYS exam and that was one of the very first decision making process in my life: Boğaziçi vs ODTÜ. I searched a lot, asked questions, got answers, contacted with the students of both universities, and made my decision: I will go for ODTÜ!
Upon having enrolled in ODTÜ, my life was changing a little bit to another direction. In my last year of high school, we, 5 of my classmates, had a chance to participate in a Comenius project in Czech Republic with 3 teachers of ours. I can comfortably say that this EU-funded project made a huge difference in my university life in 3 ways. First, I had the chance to meet people from different cultures for the first time in my life. Second, I became more self-confident in speaking English. Third, I was more motivated to participate in such international projects in my future too. After that, I had another opportunity to participate in an international training about children rights in Istanbul in September 2011. Again, it was a multi-cultural environment where I had to force myself to utilize my knowledge of English. These two trainings led to another trainings as well.
During 1st year, I googled everything about European Union projects, not only university-level Erasmus exchange which mostly comes to our mind first. One day, I discovered that there were other sorts of projects which young people aged 18 to 30 can participate even not having to pay for anything other than 30% share of transportation. Another day, I bumped into something called European Voluntary Service (Avrupa Gönüllü Hizmeti in Turkish). It was required that young people who want to participate in an EVS project must send their CV’s and motivation letters related organization. This meant that it was high time that I had to prepare a CV document for myself. I put some information to my CV file and prepared it in Europass format which is widely accepted by EU organisations and institutions.
Then, it was time to send my CV and topic-focused motivation letter to local and international organisations to apply for the EVS projects. I tried my luck for around 6 months when I and one of my friend was “offered” a 1-month project in Romania. I said “offered” because for EVS projects it must be you who is chosen, not generally offered, let’s call it a luck 
I did my EVS in Romania and my main activities as a volunteer covered going to a village school to teach children there. Even these children were unable to speak English properly, we did not have any communication problem with them. After doing my EVS*, I again did not want to be separated from this international environment and I kept applying for other youth exchange projects. This process taught me that how much motivated you keep yourself for a goal, that much you are valued and given importance by others. If it was not for my desire and effort, I would not have the following chances on my hand:
Through the end of my second year at METU, I had participated in two other youth exchange projects, one in Germany and Poland, the other in Croatia.
In my third year, I benefited from Youth in Action Programme* in two different projects again, first one in Germany, second one in France – could not visit Paris, sorry 
I never called myself as an opportunist person, but I believe that I was in the right place in the right time. Yes, I was participating in those projects but at the same time I kept volunteering for those organisations which gave me other opportunities to go abroad and see different cultures, exchange ideas, and come up with stronger network relations and so on. This was like two-direction social benefit in which each of the parties were adding something up to themselves.
People in Turkey, especially students, always keep complaining about they have almost no chance to go abroad and participate in such projects other than the Erasmus experience. They are wrong! Or they are looking at but not seeing the whole picture.
Now, as I stated in very beginning, I am moving to a little bit different direction than my actual field of graduation. I still keep the idea of teaching but I have other qualifications to make use of for my career plans.
Last month, we have launched a web site, www.projepanosu.com, and we are gathering youth workers, social service workers, social entrepreneurs, local government figures, and project staff in this civil society platform. The main purpose of the web site is to inform young people about different opportunities that might change their lives to a little bit different direction, like they did to me. In the first month of launch, we have been visited by 13.000 young people and this number is growing day by day.
My final words go to 1st and 2nd year students of our department: Please, volunteer for an organization, search for the opportunities, participate in EU-funded projects, go abroad and experience different cultures, improve your knowledge of world, and widen your vision. You will be the teachers of English tomorrow and I am not exaggerating that you have to know everything as English teachers!
Let your social benefit be huge!
*You can do your EVS once in a life in two ways: 1-3 months as short term EVS, longer than 3 months to 12 months as long term EVS.
* More theoretical information about the new programme (Erasmus+, it is NOT Erasmus university student exchange) on www.ua.gov.tr and eurodesk.ua.gov.tr
* More practical info can be asked to me via Facebook
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