My motivation to join the one-year exchange program in Leiden is primarily academic. I wanted to further my studies in Global Studies, and discover the heritage of Indonesia in the Netherlands, its former colonizer. 

Among the various classes offered here at Leiden, by far my favorite class was Jews and Judaism. Since I come from Indonesia where virtually no Jewish community is present, the lecture was indeed very revelatory.

I also participated in a program called Moot Court Public International Law. After months of preparation, I appeared before the Court and presented my case. The judges found my performance to be exceptional, and awarded me with the highest score. What is more, I had an opportunity to enter the Peace Palace in The Hague and actually talk with the staffs!

In the future I am considering to pursue masters and doctoral degree in Europe. Studying abroad was a great opportunity to familiarize myself to the more liberal education culture of Europe.

Studying abroad for a year made me deepen the thoughts about my future career and widen my academic interest. I decided to study abroad because I wanted to have new experiences by living in different environment and study wider area of subjects with American students.

I took economics, psychology, and statistics classes in the fall semester. All courses have difficult contents to understand and memorize but I really enjoyed studying since I did not study them before at Ritsumeikan University. There are various events that I participated and experienced American culture such as Thanksgiving Day dinner, Broadway musicals and Cathedral ball. I had spent exchange life fully with studying and experiencing American culture at the same time. 

Even I am an international student at Ritsumeikan University and could learn a lot of things during the 2 years study in Japan, life in America was another new challenge which gave me different aspects of learning.

I studied at American University in Washington D.C. for 4 semesters from my freshman year since DUDP was my primary reason for choosing RU. Being able to study in D.C. for 2 years was very rewarding because I got to learn actual core contents in competitive classes with the same requirements as native-English speakers.

The biggest thing I learned was to push myself to go beyond my limit, study and learn about International Development in depth with professors who are active in the field.

This program is hard, intense, and requires guts and a strong mentality, but joining the program was the best decision I ever made. I highly recommend future students to join the DUDP and explore two worlds of RU and AU.

I spent a semester in the School of Business and Management at the Institute Technology Bandung in Indonesia. I chose ITB because I am interested in urban planning and Bandung had been selected as a model city in this field. The highlight of my time at ITB was taking part in the Bandung Creative City Forum. It was interesting to learn how Bandung’s urban planning has successfully changed the current Indonesian mindset of “going out and having fun is going to the mall” to “having fun could be done outdoors in the city parks.”

Overall the classes were challenging but with the help of my classmates and professors I could learn in depth how to analyze global issues from a business perspective.