Grace Brokenshire ’24 on her time abroad in Germany

Grace Brokenshire ’24 is a civil engineering major who went abroad in spring 2022 on our sophomore engineering program in Bonn, Germany. Grace is one of our global ambassadors for the 2022-23 school year. Here’s what she had to say about her time abroad:

Coming into college, I was never actually planning on going abroad. But after a student mentor mentioned to me how early engineering students had to apply to go, I decided to apply just in case I ended up actually interested in the opportunity. I always kept in mind that I could drop from the program before I actually went. Fast forward about a year and I was getting on a plane to Bonn, Germany because after being accepted to my program, I never dropped out.

I stayed with a host family and had a host sister my age who is now one of my closest friends. I took a full course load of 5 classes with a mix of some required for my major and others filling common course of study requirements. I found the courses to be a bit less challenging than those I had previously taken on campus at Lafayette which allowed me to travel a lot more when I did not have class. Some of the best experiences I had while abroad were the trips my friends and I planned on our own and the study tours organized by our host school, AIB. Over the course of my 4 months in Germany, I was able to travel to France, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, and almost 20 German cities.

One of my favorite parts of going abroad was bonding with 16 other engineers from Lafayette whom I might not have met otherwise. Having the shared experience of living in Bonn for all of that time, learning together, and traveling together is something I do not think any of us will ever forget. I will forever be grateful that I decided to apply to the program my freshman spring semester just in case; it truly was one of the best decisions I have ever made.