The new academic year has just begun! I hope that the summer holidays have put you in a good mood and you will get off on the right foot this semester. To help you on your first days at a university in Poland, I would like to go through some of the most common vocabulary you’re likely to encounter in the university context. Ready?
First and foremost, the most important (and the easiest) word on this list is: uniwersytet - I believe I do not need to translate this one. As you might have noticed, public Polish universities are usually called after the city or region, such as Uniwersytet Warszawski, Uniwersytet Łódzki, etc. one of the exceptions is Uniwersytet Jagielloński in Krakow, named after the royal dynasty. Technical university is called politechnika. Every uniwersytet is divided into wydziały - departments (singular: wydział), for example wydział filologiczny, wydział nauk o środowisku (department of environmental sciences), wydział matematyki. The idea of university campus is relatively new to the Polish system of university education, therefore it is very useful to know where a given wydział of your university is located in a given city. It is also important what your kierunek (studiów) - your studies course is. If you’re studying at a Polish university during an exchange you’re likely to stay in a dorm, commonly called akademik, formally it is referred to as dom studenta, but you’re not very likely to hear anyone use this term. Now, the most important place for every student is… dziekanat (the dean’s office, from dziekan - the dean) - I’m not even joking! Even as an exchange student, you’re very likely to visit this place at least once per semester - this is where you can get a lot of bureaucracy done. Now a lot of these things are also done at wirtualny dziekanat, at the comfort of your own home! It is dziekanat that issues legitymacja (studencka) - your student ID.
Once you’ve done all the bureaucracy, it’s time to head for zajęcia - classes (always in plural!), these are usually divided into different types - wykład (lecture), or school-like classes: konwersatorium, ćwiczenia or laboratorium, language classes are called lektorat. Very often universities offer elective courses – zajęcia fakultatywne or, colloquially, fakultety. At the end of the semester you will have to pass egzamin (exam) and receive ocena (mark). Some subjects don’t have the usual marks but you either pass them or not, in this case, the passing mark is called zaliczenie. Oftentimes, the teachers hold regular quizzes and tests throughout the semester, these are called kolokwium (plural: kolokwia), colloquially known as koło. You can either pass - zdać or nie zdać (lit. not pass) your test, if you fail it, you can use the colloquial verb oblać. The exams are usually held during sesja egzaminacyjna, simply referred to as sesja, if you need to retake some of the exams, sesja poprawkowa usually follows.
I hope this short overview was helpful - you’re going to hear these words on a daily basis at a Polish university, so you can practise them right away! Do you think I forgot something? Is there other vocabulary you’d like to learn? Let me know in the comments.