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Dear Merchistonian Community,
At the end of my student life, six years after leaving Merchiston, I feel it is time to send you an update of what I have done during those past years.
In 2002, a few months after leaving School, I started my social service, still compulsory for German citizens. This involved working for 10 months in a small children's home, where I did mainly manual work, such as renovation rooms and looking after the garden and sheep. But I also cooked food and played with children (or youths I should rather say, as they were all ages between 10 and 18), who were mainly living there because their parents were incapable, for a variety of reasons, of taking care of them.
After those 10 months, I briefly continued to work with young people, as member of the organising team of a sailing holday for young people from poor families who could otherwise not afford a holiday.
Finally, in September 2003, I joined King's College London to start my double degree in English law and French law (LL.B. and maîtrise en droits). The first two years of this course, which is the most prestigious of its kind (it acually has a better reputation than the Anglo-French law course at Cambridge!), were spent in at King's in London, where I studied the core subjects of English law as well as parts of European law. For the final two years of this four-year course, all students (around 40 in total, half British, half French) move together to Paris, to the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, to attend classes on French (and international) law, together with "normal" French students and others from abroad doing similar programmes from Madrid, Cologne and Florence. Studying at a French university proved to be a very different from King's. Classes are much bigger and start much earlier in the morning, the legal methodology is entirely different and so is the attitude of students and professors. To make up for this, Paris offered a high quality of life and unforgettable experiences such as the the student strike and blockade, similar to 1968, which I experienced in 2006.
Besides my studies, I was involved in debating, attending the European University championships in Cork in spring 2005. I have also been active in student politics, as elected representatve and president of an association during several years, with which I have recently organised a major legal conference in Paris with many international speakers.
At the end of those four years of law studies, in summer 2007, I graduated with First class honours in my English LL.B. and a "mention assez bien" in my French maîtrise.
During those four years I developed my interest in European affairs and law and I got used to the European, multilingual lifestyle, so I applied for a Masters at the College of Europe, sometimes also referred to as "Collège de Bruges". This is not quite correct, as the College also has a second campus called "Natolin", which is in Warsaw, and which became my home for the last year. In Warsaw, I studied "European Interdisciplinary Studies" for am MA, which is a mix of politics, economics, law, history and sociology relating to the processes of European integration and the European Union. The course is bilingual (English/French), all the 100 students from all over Europe learn and live together on the beautiful campus. In fact, this is very similar to a boarding school like Merchiston: living together with many friends on campus, sharing many moments, is just an unforgettable life experience.
I specialised in my master thesis, which I wrote in French, on the links between international treaties in the area of climate change and their interaction with the law of international trade and the WTO.
After five years of studies and three degrees, it is now time for me to start work. In October, I will start a traineeship at the European Commission in Brussels, working on legal aspects of the EU's budget. Unfortunately, as I have not yet passed the "concours", I will not be able to stay at the Commission after the 5 month traineeship, but I will most probably stay in Brussels and work in the private sector or even an NGO working on European matters.
Kind regards from Hamburg,
Marc
Anyone wishing to get in touch with Marc should contact Carolyn Thornton in the Merchistonian Office |
