This article is an opinion piece by a current student or alumnus/alumna of the College of Europe, featured in our monthly newsletter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the College of Europe. Responsibility for the content lies solely with the author.
I almost didn’t do it. My friends talked me into applying and it has been one of the best decisions and journeys of my life.
I first heard of this mysterious European Studies institution in Bruges called the College of Europe, perhaps appropriately, while making a different journey several years before. At the beginning of the holidays following a consuming trimester at Cambridge I was travelling back to my native Northern Ireland from Stansted Airport when, as many of us do, I realised I had arrived far too early (again) for my flight. The veteran newsagent chain WHSmith came to my rescue, and I began passing the time by flicking through the various newspapers and magazines before me, ensuring nevertheless that I appeared sufficiently engrossed anytime a passerby entered my eyeline. In one of the papers I picked up was an article which mentioned the “College of Europe”. From what I gathered in that newsagent it seemed to be some high-level university in Belgium exclusively dedicated to studying the European Union and producing successive cohorts of fonctionnaires capable of organising and operating the Brussels bureaucratic machine, by no means a small feat.
As a student of foreign languages with a strong interest in European political history it needless to say grabbed my attention. True to form, I must admit that despite standing there and reading through several publications in that airport WHSmith before my gate was announced, I didn’t actually buy anything to the mildly perceptible chagrin of the proprietor. The College stuck in my mind on the plane, however, and once I was home, I continued to think about it. From my academic and personal interests, it seemed absolutely ideal and the vague aspiration of applying at a future date was planted in my mind.
Then a while later I was given a nudge to seriously consider applying when I read more about it in Johannes de Berlaymont’s “Working for the EU: How to Get In”. For those like myself aspiring to work in and around the EU institutions, the College of Europe appeared to offer an excellent combination of dedicated and highly relevant teaching with the occasion to join a tightly-knit international alumni network. What wasn’t to like!? A vague aspiration was gradually becoming something more concrete. I had harboured aspirations of studying and working abroad for several years and the College looked like a unique entry point into the beating heart of Europe.
Despite this enthusiasm, at several potential earlier windows to apply I didn’t. I didn’t apply there when my undergraduate studies came to an end and following my first Master I instead completed two traineeships in Brussels, even if I did remain interested and the idea never left. Why didn’t I apply? Long story short, life does not move in straight lines and things change. I did my first Master at Cambridge because I had the grades to do so and because at the time I was also entertaining the idea of PhD studies before this closer look at academia cured me of that thought. I then applied for my first traineeship in Brussels because like anyone in their early twenties I was keen to get my first professional experience and begin earning money.
One of the two sets of people who ultimately inspired me to apply was a friend of a mutual acquaintance (he has become a very good friend through this experience) who was studying at the College in the promotion before mine. His ringing endorsement of the institution and his accounts of the student life there were very convincing indeed and made me understand the College more deeply for what it really is: a community unlike any other. The second set of people were friends from my first Master who during our attempt to recreate the film “In Bruges” while on a winter weekend away there bluntly told me on the way back from a bar on the last night “this place is so you Sam, you’d be insane not to apply”.
With a little motivational help from my friends, my mind was now made up. On the day of the deadline with about three or four hours to go, I submitted my application and left the office for the night.
If there is a moral as such to this short story, it is that you should listen to your friends. Without them I would not have gained the life-defining experiences and friendships in Bruges as a member of the Delors promotion. A secondary moral is that chance encounters can change the course of someone’s life, in my case one with an article in an airport newsagent’s.
Samuel CROOKS
Samuel is a dual British-Irish national from Northern Ireland who recently completed his studies at the College of Europe (MA in European Political and Governance Studies) as a member of the Jacques Delors Promotion. This summer he will begin a twelve-month internship at Microsoft in Brussels within the European Government Affairs team. Prior to the College, Samuel completed BA and MPhil studies at the University of Cambridge as well as traineeships at the Martens Centre and the European Parliament.
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