In Summer 2021 I traveled to Brussels to study the EU and its policy process with 12 other exceptional students. I had the unique perspective of being the only CS major there, and one of only three engineers (the others studying environmental or mechanical). All the (roughly ten) others were studying international affairs, economics, or political science; in other words, things immediately relevant to our purpose there. For the first few days I felt incredibly out of my element. I had none of the PoliSci background that everyone else seemed to have - I could barely point to Hungary or Greece on a map, much less explain why one was suffering from democratic backsliding or how the EU Central Bank’s post-pandemic economic recovery plan would affect the other. Luckily, everyone else was more than willing to share their knowledge.
The conversations we had over coffee and wine at Cafe Belga in one of the many open plazas that dot the city, and the whirlwind classes on the EU’s political structure, components, & history, helped get me up to date by our first interview with a former EU official. In a couple weeks, I was writing & asking questions for our daily interviews with politicians and bureaucrats just as well as any of the others.
In addition to our tours of Brussels & various EU buildings, we got the opportunity to travel to Luxembourg, Antwerp, and Bruges. In Luxembourg we toured the city, learned its history, and visited the European Court of Justice, the EU's counterpart to our judicial branch. In Antwerp and Bruges, we took even more historical tours, visited museums and clocktowers, and learned the local myths of giants, mermaids, and severed hands. (“Antwerpen” is the archaic version of the Dutch “Hand werpen”, or “hand throwing”, after the town's founding legend of a Roman soldier’s encounter with a giant; their discussion left the giant dead and one-handed, and the soldier found himself the owner of a newly vacant riverside plot of land. Turns out in Flanders, if you throw enough body parts into a river, you're allowed to build a town by it.)
The trip was fantastic, the classes were rich and interesting, and the people I met and studied with were even more so. I highly recommend running off to foreign places and learning things which you’re entirely unqualified for, if ever you get the chance; you’ll surprise yourself with how quickly you adapt and how much you learn.
One of the products of this trip that I'm most proud of is a research paper on EU policy in AI & data governance, which you can read here.