I really wanted to change a career direction and to move from the environmental sciences towards environmental policy. Applying to a 4-week Science Policy Summer Institute offered by Duke University – referred to as a young ivy league university in the United States – seemed as the right choice.

Now that I attended the programme, I can confirm that this was the best choice that I made because I got admitted to a master’s in public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology with a full scholarship. My enthusiasm for policy, doing an intensive summer programme right after graduation, must have reflected this to the interviewers and as a coincidence, one of the professors, also the head of division, who interviewed me also completed his studies in North Carolina near Duke University. Overall, I think that the summer institute gave me a great head start to my new master’s degree and helped me to familiarize myself with quantitative and qualitative analysis of policies.

I have been in the United States before when I was on a high school exchange programme, so I was not afraid of going to the Unites States itself. I was more worried about the summer institute and the level at which they will teach science policy that I had no background in. However, meeting the very diverse group of people that were attending the course made my fears disappear. We all came from different countries/ states, with different levels of education and from various subject areas, starting from microbiology through civil engineering to law. So, this did not end up being a problem at all. However, I had some issues with the accommodation that I was renting for the summer from full-time student. It was awfully DIRTY. After a long flight and an overall transportation time of around 12-14 hours to my new ‘home’, as my first thing to do was washing my sheets, vacuuming the floor and dusting my furniture. Couple days later, I saw a mouse and there were ants too… so yeah, the flat wasn’t really well-kept. Anyways, my flatmates who moved in a week later for the summer as well, were amazing people who I had a beer with, at our surprisingly nice balcony, every evening.

At the end of my programme, I got to know my classmates, made friends with my flatmates and did lots of unusual American things that I haven’t done before. For example, I went to a female polo game and a baseball game. The baseball game was followed by a super long firework show that I did not expect because anywhere else in the world, I’ve seen such long firework shows only on New Year’s Eve or National Days.

I am very grateful that the University of Edinburgh helped me, once again, to advance my career even further and to make lifelong memories.

Duke University, Main Campus

Gluten-free burger (very rare to find such a thing) at the Kings Dominion amusement park, Virginia

Doesn’t look as scary as the ride was, huh… there were so many twists that it was crazy, Kings Dominion, Virginia

Female polo match, it was really cool but also very warm so I kind of felt bad for the horses sometimes

Some serious business… we were discussing energy policies with Prof. Brian Murray – Director of the Duke University Energy Initiative

The beautiful and long fireworks show after a baseball game that I was talking about