My name is Claudia Smits, I studied the LLM in International Law in the academic year of 2019/2020.
I'm half Dutch, half American, and I grew up in Belgium.
There were lots of highlights for the programme -
I really enjoyed my time at the law school. One of the bigger ones, bigger positives, was
how tightly knit the law school community is, so once you're in the law school and all of
your classes are in the law school, you really feel like a part of that school in particular.
You get to know everybody, you see the same faces at the cafe, stuff like that.
And the range of electives was also a really big positive - I liked that I was able to
branch out from just international law classes and do other, for example, more
specific classes - one of my favorite classes was a robotics and AI class with
a professor who was very, very enthusiastic, which was another
positive that I really appreciated; that all professors were leaders in their field,
who really knew what they were talking about, and they really were excited to teach you.
I loved Edinburgh as a city. I had been privileged to, in my life, live in bigger cities,
bigger metropolitan cities, like New York and Hong Kong, so when I came to Edinburgh I
could appreciate that it was still a city, where if you walk around you're not going to see the
same faces all the time, but it's a nice size that you feel you can build up familiarity with
where you are really quickly. I thought it was a really intimate city, really beautiful, and you
kind of find your area, wherever you're living maybe, or where you spend the most time, that you
really feel connected to, and it's a really kind city as well, and mainly it's just beautiful.
Yeah, this year was very strange - it was really difficult, for some more than others, depending on
your situation. We were lucky in the LLM programmes or the postgrads of the
law school, because we didn't have that much teaching left when lockdown started so we only had -
I only personally had maybe three or four classes online that I did from home, which of course was
different, but considering we had already done so much in person it didn't feel like that much of a loss.
But even those classes were fascinating, and well organised so that was no problem.
The dissertation was difficult for me, personally, because I had been working alongside my studies to
support myself, and when I was furloughed from my job that made a few things more difficult.
Which I'm sure other people, other students also experienced similar difficulties, where
even if you wish that you could spend all your time reading and working on your
dissertation, you did have other more pressing concerns to deal with to be able to do
that in the first place; so that was very difficult, but I kept the law school informed,
and the postgraduate office, and my academic tutor and my dissertation supervisor were
extremely helpful and understanding, and super supportive.
So with my degree, I would like to work in
certainly an international organisation; initially I was looking predominantly at
organisations that focused on humanitarian work, peace operations, and I have a particular interest
in disarmament affairs, so I'm very keen on joining the UN at some point in my career, hopefully.
However, through the law school and various extracurricular activities, I learned more about
the judicial side of my degree, and what that could be useful for,
so there's certainly an interest of mine to look into more community-based law making and
community-based support that is more local instead of international.