SBCC student Lahla Sison concludes her STEM program in Germany this summer and shares final excursions, insights, and appreciation.
Read as she marches forward on her adventure abroad.
After spending a fun-filled week in Berlin we had the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Here, I spent some of my favorite days of this trip, and I believe my peers would agree as well.
On our first day, we had a boat tour that ran through the city’s canal. On this tour, we learned about Amsterdam’s history and how it determined the unique architecture of the city.
While in the Netherlands, we also took a visit to TU Delft where my peers and I were astonished by some of the projects the students were working on. Specifically their DREAM building project, which included sending a rocket into space, and engineering a contraption to help those unable to walk to be able to walk again. A very inspiring place indeed but unfortunately you cannot take pictures inside.
Within our time spent in Germany, my favorite city has to be Munich. It’s also the last city we visited on our trip. Munich is one of the largest cities in Germany and the capital of the largest state of Germany, called Bavaria.
We spent the first day exploring this history-filled city on a guided tour and saw magnificent cathedrals. In some of the areas, we stood exactly where many movements started and even saw where Hitler started the “Kristallnacht,” also known as the night of broken glass. It all felt like I went for a walk through a history book used in schools, and was a humbling experience considering what the people of this time endured.
Our trip has been led by the awesome Raeanne Napoleon, the chair of the chemistry department at SBCC. In our classroom time, she taught us about multiple areas in the STEM field from chemistry including the geography and with a sprinkle of life advice. Upon learning about the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math) in the classroom, we were able to see it applied at some of our visits. For example, after learning some chemistry, we visited BASF which is the worldwide leading chemical company.
While our program is slowly coming to an end, I am feeling very lucky that I was part of such a diverse group. Our group consisted of 25 people, and although I was not able to get close to everyone, I still feel like I got to know a majority and still felt like we were all friends. It was fun to watch ourselves grow as a group from figuring out how to navigate at train stations to walking the busy streets of Amsterdam and professionally dodging bikes, cars, and other tourists. We have definitely earned our stripes as tourists and while the program has concluded, I will take the opportunity of being in Europe to further explore the countries independently.
In these last 20 days of traveling around Germany and the Netherlands, I found that my expectations were exceeded. It’s not a cliché that you discover new things about yourself while traveling, it is a proven formula. I have learned so much about myself in just 20 days, and my perspective on life has been opened up to so many new ideas. I look forward to having future travels and further discovering myself and this world.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my blogs, and I hope that you will find yourself on an adventure of your own in the near future. SBCC offers many short and semester programs and there are many scholarships available. I was fortunate to receive the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship that covered most of my program expenses.
You can find out more about the SBCC programs here and more about the Gilman
Scholarship here.
Best Wishes,
Lahla Sison
