From Mexico to WUPOL to Paris: New Perspectives Along the Way

By Emma Shendi

“And what are your plans after graduation?” is a question you get asked quite a lot in your final year of high school. For me, it was usually followed by an answer that changed every two weeks: journalism, economics, law… With so many possible paths, how was I supposed to know?

So I decided to take a gap year and spent it in Mexico as part of the weltwärts program, where I worked in a kindergarten and lived with a host family. Living with my Mexican host family was the most formative part of my experience. Beyond learning how to make tacos and guacamole, I learned a great deal about Mexican culture, especially through conversations with my host brother about politics. It pushed me to adapt to a different communication style, reflect more critically on my own privileges, and engage more seriously with concepts like Eurocentrism.

The only thing I still had not figured out was what exactly I wanted to do after my studies. I have always been interested in politics, an interest fueled both by the change that politics can create when it works, and by the frustration I feel when governments don’t do enough to solve the problems I care about, like the climate crisis. At the same time, politics alone felt too theoretical for me. I wanted to understand how political decisions connect to economic structures and ecological realities, and how we can actually produce knowledge about these connections.

That’s when I discovered WUPOL at WU. The program felt like the right mix: politics, environment, and economics, combined with training in research methods. I liked that it wasn’t just about learning “answers,” but also about learning how knowledge is created, tested, and debated.

In the first two semesters, I was still somewhat skeptical about whether I had made the right choice, but once I started with WUPOL, I knew I had. In our classes, we were encouraged to think critically and question every theory we were given. In my specialization, Politics & Money, we didn’t only focus on Western economies like the US and Austria; we also discussed cases from Bangladesh, Ecuador, and beyond. I especially benefited from instructors with different backgrounds, for example, from Indonesia or the US, and I appreciated the effort to include authors with diverse perspectives in our readings. In many ways, this built on what I took away from my gap year: how important it is not to look at politics and economics only through a Eurocentric lens.

Beyond classes, WU’s student clubs offered a great way to get involved. I joined 180 Degrees Consulting Vienna, a student consulting club that cooperates with NGOs, and I also took part in WU’s Buddy Program, providing weekly tutoring in cooperation with the Red Cross.

This semster, I moved to Paris for my exchange semester at ESSEC. Going abroad always means starting from scratch: a new environment, new people, and new routines. That can feel overwhelming at first, but it also pushes you out of your comfort zone. For me, this semester is a chance to improve my French and explore topics like public policy or doing business in India from a new angle.

This exchange semester will also be my last semester of active study. Afterwards, I plan to take another gap year to do internships in different areas. In a way, I’m back at the same question again: “What comes next?” But this time I have a clearer sense of direction, and I feel equipped with skills and perspectives I can build on as I figure it out.

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