Shalini Kurapati

A lot of people ridiculed me when I decided to come to the Netherlands to study Engineering and Policy Analysis (EPA) instead of choosing Georgia Tech in the States. That was in part because it was the Netherlands, and in part, because they didn’t understand about the curriculum. AT TU Delft, they teach us real-world issues, which are more difficult to explain. But we seem to be getting good at it: ask any one of us a question, and you will get an answer that begins with ‘It depends’. This past year has been an eventful one. I took a lot of courses, did some truly exhausting projects, was actively on a committee of the Curius student society, did an exchange programme at a Madrid university, travelled to some 8 countries and partied like crazy. Out of the 26 people who initially started in August, there were 17 countries represented – but many in my class were Chinese. Of course I tried to show off my Chinese. And for a long time I didn’t understand why my friend Sizhu insisted that I call her 'Josie' rather than Sizhu. She took almost a month to tell me that the way I was pronouncing her name meant 'dead pig' instead of 'a beautiful girl'!