Carine Hadjadene is studying veterinary medicine at Freie Universität in order to realize her life-long dream of working in animal welfare. After completing her studies in biology and geology at home in France, she decided to move to Berlin and try something new. She was awarded a DAAD Prize on Wednesday, October 12, 2022. Every year, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) honors outstanding international students and doctoral candidates at German universities who make a significant contribution to society and have an excellent academic record.

Getting a Foothold in the Sciences in France

Carine Hadjadene was twenty-five-years old when she realized that she didn’t want to be a biology or geology teacher at a secondary school or a lecturer in higher education. She had just finished her master’s degree in her hometown of Paris.

“The process of applying for university courses in France is different to that in Germany,” she explains. To apply for both state universities and elite universities known as grandes écoles, students must first attend classes preparatoires that focus on their chosen specialization for two years. Carine took biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and veterinary medicine – but unfortunately things didn’t work out the first time around, so she studied biology and geology at Université Paris-Saclay, because veterinary science isn’t taught at state universities in France. However, after completing her master’s degree she was confident that she wanted to pursue a career in veterinary medicine. All she needed to do now was find a country where she could achieve this goal.

Preparing for Student Life in Germany

Carine started learning German in the fifth grade. Once she had decided that she would be heading to Germany to study veterinary medicine, she took a two-year intensive course at Université Paris-Saclay and passed her C1-level test. This allowed her to apply for universities through the German system alongside German applicants, and she was soon accepted to Freie Universität Berlin.

Of course, that begs the question of how she is coping with studying a scientific subject in German: “Smalltalk is actually harder for me,” she laughs. “Because French is a Romance language, I often have less trouble understanding specialist terms that come from Latin than my German classmates.” Chatting in the cafeteria after class, where friends jumped from topic to topic, was more difficult – but she says that it has gotten easier with time.

Returning to France as an Erasmus Student

To experience what it was like to study veterinary medicine in France, Carine decided to return to her native country as an Erasmus student. She spent her fifth semester at École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort in Val-de-Marne near Paris. “But that was right when the country was in lockdown, so I could only attend digital lectures,” she says. It helped a lot that lecturers in France provide handouts that are so detailed that you usually don’t have to jot anything else down. “In Germany, things are different: You actually have to go to lectures and take notes if you don’t want to miss out on anything that could come up in the exams.”

To help other international students settle into life in Germany, Carine has now become an Erasmus Buddy. She organizes meet-ups and excursions for exchange students in Berlin. As an active member of the International Veterinary Student Association (IVSA) she also reaches out to and maintains contact with other veterinary medicine students in Berlin and abroad.

In her eight semesters of studying veterinary medicine, Carine has completed several internships in both Germany and France. The most recent of these were at an agricultural college near Hanover and at a large-scale animal hospital in Frégis. As she felt at odds with the “assembly line” mentality there and didn’t particularly enjoy her time at these institutions, she chose to do a second voluntary internship at the Société Protectrice des Animaux (SPA) in Marseille.

Dedicated to Animal Welfare

Carine’s time at the SPA made a profound impression on her. The shelter is where new homes are found for abused pets, and animals belonging to less well-off owners receive more affordable medical treatment: “The owners, and even the animals themselves, are so grateful for the help. You can just feel it.” Her work at the SPA was fully in line with her values, which is why she made the decision to receive further training in this area.

During the break between semesters she did an internship in Bulgaria with the German-Bulgarian Stray Animal Welfare Association (Deutsch-Bulgarische Straßentier-Nothilfe e.V. – DBSN) where she helped out in their program to trap and neuter stray dogs and cats. “You can’t even imagine how bad these animals have it – how thin, sick, and emaciated they are, how they struggle to find food every day and give birth to too many puppies and kittens,” she says.

Many of the DBSN’s patients have been adopted out to families in Germany. Carine is now trying to raise the association’s profile in Berlin via social media and connect rescued animals with new owners. Before an adoption she meets the prospective owners to check whether they have enough time and space for a pet. “I really enjoy doing hands-on work to help animals in need,” she says.

A Bright Future Ahead

When she has finished her studies, Carine would like to work at an animal welfare organization or a veterinary inspection office (or “Veterinäramt”). This institution in Germany is responsible for animal welfare in administrative districts and helps to prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases. She is excited to finally begin working at a veterinary practice and is looking forward to her final year, when she will be doing mostly hands-on work.

The future vet shakes her head to the question of whether she has a pet at home. She was very close to taking a stray cat home to Berlin from Bulgaria. But she acknowledges that having a pet means taking on responsibility for their well-being, which means not leaving them alone at home for hours on end and being too tired to play with them after a long day of work. One day she would love to adopt a cat or a dog – from Bulgaria, of course.

The DAAD Prize, which came with a grant of one thousand euros, was awarded to Carine during the Department of Veterinary Medicine’s introductory event for first-semester students on October 12, 2022. She wants to donate the prize money to her pet causes in Germany and France: the German-Bulgarian Stray Animal Welfare Association and Société Protectrice des Animaux.

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This article originally appeared in German on October 14, 2022, in campus.leben, the online magazine of Freie Universität Berlin.