When I first joined the Laidlaw Programme, I knew it would involve research, leadership training, and, at some point, stepping quite far outside my comfort zone. What I did not fully appreciate was just how much those two years would end up shaping the way I think, work, and interact with the world. Looking back now, from the research bench to a small island in the Aegean Sea, it has been a journey worth writing about.
Where It All Began: The Research Summer
My first summer on the programme was dedicated to research, something I had always wanted to try but never quite had the structure or support to pursue properly. Thanks to the stipend provided by Laidlaw, I was able to set aside other commitments and focus on a topic I was genuinely curious about, working toward producing my own paper for the first time. It was an incredibly rewarding process, but also a demanding one.
If there is one lesson that summer taught me above all else, it is time management. Research does not happen in a straight line, and it was easy to get absorbed in a problem for days at a time. I had to learn, sometimes the hard way, how to structure my time so that other responsibilities did not quietly pile up in the background. It was a small but important taste of the kind of discipline that independent work demands.
Facing the Room: The Poster Session
At the end of the research phase came the poster session, where I had to present my project in front of a room full of professors. I have always been the type to get nervous speaking in front of teachers and senior academics, and this was no exception. I told myself I simply had to push through the fear and introduce my research as best I could.
Naturally, it did not go quite as planned. Halfway through the introduction I had carefully memorised, one of the professors cut in with a question. In that moment, all my preparation suddenly felt irrelevant, and I had to think on my feet instead of reciting a script. To my relief, I managed to answer well enough that he seemed genuinely satisfied, and I ended up receiving an honourable mention for the project, a moment I still look back on with pride.
More than the recognition itself, what stayed with me was the shift in mindset. I learned to worry less about getting every word right and instead focus on being present and responsive in the moment, a skill that has proven far more useful than any memorised script. I also came away with a much better sense of how to present clearly and design a poster that actually communicates, rather than one that simply looks busy.
Crossing Continents: The Laidlaw Conference in the US
Later that year, the programme took me to North America for a conference, which was itself a milestone. It was the first time I had ever left Asia, and there was a real sense of stepping into the unknown. Once I was there, though, any nerves quickly gave way to excitement at meeting scholars from all over the world, some of whom I would later cross paths with again during my Leadership in Action project.
What struck me most was how different everyone's lives were, and yet how much common ground we found through the programme itself. Hearing about other scholars' projects, their backgrounds, and the paths that had brought them to Laidlaw was genuinely fascinating, and it left me with a lasting curiosity about how such different life stories could still converge in the same place. Looking back, I am grateful to Laidlaw for pushing me to step outside my comfort zone and travel beyond Asia for the very first time.
Leadership in Action: Offene Arme, Chios
The second summer brought an entirely different kind of challenge: my Leadership in Action project with Offene Arme, an NGO that provides non-food items to asylum seekers on the Greek island of Chios. In almost every sense, this was unlike anything I had experienced before. Chios is small and remote, a far cry from anywhere I would call a city, and I found myself living somewhere quiet and unfamiliar, unable to speak the local language, and setting foot in Europe for the first time.
It was a summer defined by adjustment, learning to navigate daily life and meaningful work in a place so different from what I was used to. But it also taught me that change does not always have to be loud to matter. Not every contribution announces itself; some differences are small and quiet on their own, yet accumulate over time into something that genuinely serves the wider cause.
Offene Arme turned out to be a wonderfully welcoming place to test this out, and it gave me real room for trial and error. Over the course of the summer, I suggested redesigning the signage in the "shops" that distribute non-food items, to make them easier for asylum seekers to navigate, and proposed sorting the clothing by colour so that both asylum seekers and volunteers restocking the shelves could find what they needed more easily. Neither idea was groundbreaking on its own, but both came from simply paying attention to what was already in front of me. I learned that you do not always have to go looking for a way to make a difference; sometimes you just have to notice a problem you are equipped to solve, and let the fix come to you. That experience, still ongoing as I write this, has already taught me a great deal about adaptability and about the quieter, less visible forms of leadership that come simply from showing up and doing the work well, even when the surroundings are unfamiliar.
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Two years in, the through-line across all of these experiences is fairly clear to me: growth rarely happens in the comfortable moments. It happened when a professor interrupted my rehearsed introduction, when I boarded a flight to a continent I had never visited, and when I arrived on a small island where nothing was quite familiar. The Laidlaw Programme did not just give me a research stipend or a conference ticket; it gave me a series of nudges, some gentle and some not so gentle, to become more capable, more curious, and considerably braver than I was when I started.