As a Fulbright Visiting Scholar I, together with my husband and two children (one and three years) went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We arrived on a cold Sunday, December 30th in an empty house in a suburban area. During our first month, we had snow, 0° Fahrenheit and snow days (schools, universities, certain institutions are closed due to the cold).
When I told my friends that I got a scholarship to go to the University of Missouri, most of them had the same reaction. I can’t blame them: before starting my application process, I would have had the same question… I used to explain to them that it was a small town somewhere in the Midwest, 600 kilometers south of Chicago. Today, as I am about to leave, my answer would be totally different. Columbia is not just a spot on a map anymore. It is a town and a University where I’ve been living for four months, and where I felt welcome from Day 1.
Moving to Ann Arbor made me feel all kinds of feelings a human will experience in a lifetime. The first days you feel excited, tired, hungry and unsure. If you are lucky enough, like me, you’ll have a colleague who helps you fill your refrigerator and a program director from IHAA who knows everything about taxes.
The Study of the U.S. Institute on Youth, Education, and Closing the Skills Gap explored how advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics are shaping how we work, where we work, and the skills and education required to work. Ryan Danenberg, a bachelor’s student in Applied Electronics at the Haute École Francisco Ferrer in Brussels was nominated by the U.S. Embassy to Belgium and the Fulbright Commission of Brussels to participate in this SUSI Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston during the summer of 2019.
New Yorkers pride themselves having a PhD for minding their own business, even treasuring their reputation for being rude. Is this true? As a Fulbrighter in New York, I say: “fake news!” New Yorkers ask me countless times how they can help me. In shops, employees are ready to point me to the needed row; at university, colleagues help me to settle in; and in the street, complete strangers guide me in the right direction the moment I seem lost. “How can I help you?” seems like a mantra I hear all the time.
Even though I had been looking forward to studying in the United States for such a long time, I was still surprised by how amazing the experience was of pursuing a Master of Laws (LL.M) at Harvard Law School. In the first place, Harvard Law School is an incredibly stimulating intellectual environment. I mainly took courses in corporate law and finance, but the way the law is taught is very different from what I was used to. I had quite a lot of seminars, where the focus is not on the professor presenting a lot of material, but rather on a debate between fellow students – all of whom are incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable. In addition, many of the courses did not have exams, but required several response papers where you had to comment on the papers on the reading list. As an academic (I was in the middle of my PhD in corporate law before coming to Harvard Law […]
While I had high expectations for my Master of Laws (LL.M.) at Harvard Law School (HLS), even those were exceeded. One the one hand, the academic experience at HLS is unparalleled, at least in my experience. On the other hand, Boston (‘the birthplace of the American revolution’) is an excellent starting point to explore the broader United States—an endlessly intriguing place.
I am writing this blog post from the train from Chicago to Washington D.C., a train ride that takes 23 hours and 30 minutes, and this after I already was on the bus this morning that took 8 hours from Minneapolis to Chicago. I decided to travel by train so I had enough time to sit, relax and contemplate my nine-month long experience in the United States.
My Fulbright adventure began in September 2018 when I arrived in “The Windy City” to start a Master of Law at the University of Chicago. My year as a Fulbright scholar has been a truly amazing experience! I was able to connect with people from all over the world and got a unique inside to the American culture.
“Isn’t it super cold in Chicago?” is one of the first questions I get asked when I tell people I’m doing my Fulbright here. The answer is yes, which is why I decided to pack my skiing jacket. That turned out to be a wise decision. In Chicago, it snows and it gets cold – really, really cold. This year the famous polar vortex passed through the Northern Midwest, breaking negative record temperatures. Even eyelashes weren’t safe. Needless to say, this was quite the event. Yet, what was even more remarkable about the whole experience was how unconcerned the locals responded to it. For example, the bus I usually take to the University was still running (see photo). Being a Belgian myself, accustomed to a more modest climate, I have gotten used to the idea that once the first hints of snow trickle down from the sky, it’s safer not to rely on public transportation anymore. But not in Chicago. […]
by Fulbright