Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (covid edition)

Doing a virtual “exchange” program, surprisingly, still spared useful learning and meaningful connections. I found myself grabbing lunch with “new” people in new places, from where I’m currently interning to a spontaneous breakfast in Germany. First meeting awkwardness, somehow, was absent. This speaks to the need to know of someone before knowing someone.

State Department Simulation Sessions

One activity involved simulating the mediation of an international dispute; groups included two large superpowers, two small countries where the conflict is taking place, and some international organizations such as NGOs and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

These sessions despite being readily available online, are most likely not common knowledge. But once we acted it out, it became immediately clear how the US views foreign policy in terms of other major powers and proxy wars. For the past decades and likely the next few, the dominant type of foreign policy will likely revolve around this model.¹⁰

There is not a win condition for this simulation, just that State Department employees give feedback on how each group presented. How well a group does generally depends on how in-line their suggestions are with the “persona” of the group they are assigned.

Useful Thoughts on Business

We had a ten week leadership seminar series through a (former) Georgetown professor who does these sessions across the US and Eastern Europe. Sessions were divided between guest speakers and certain leadership “principles.” I personally found the former insightful—we were being spoken to by people who had careers spanning industry, media, and they were speaking privately just to us. It was the real type of learning when you see your friend cook; not just book learning.

First we had a former C-suite Coca-Cola executive speak to us about the coup in Myanmar at the time. If you’re an international organization and this just happens, what do you do? Some decisions simply must be made in a short period of time. The wrong answers involved talking about American support for democracy; he made it clear as an international business, they go anywhere they are allowed to go. They invest in capital equipment, support the community, and build up local leaders.

If his words count as a proxy for American business culture, I have high confidence in continued growth of the American stock market and American businesses. We look at these businesses today and see a broad range of people at leadership levels; American businesses are able to attract the best talent from around the world. I contrast this with my time interning at BMW—the people at top levels are all German.

Some wise parting words he gave us were that despite being aware of the health crisis Coca-Cola was causing, he could do little despite an executive since there was not a corporate cultural willingness to do anything about it. This, personally, is a strong support for founder-led companies. He stated that although he made many good decisions, he has a drawer full of bad ones.

Another anecdotal story is that he got started in Pine Island Capital Partners, a private equity firm linked to Antony Blinken, because John Thain (supposedly a big guy in finance) along with another Goldman Sachs guy went around finding people to join his new PE firm from international backgrounds. That was supposedly their competitive advantage. They had nothing. No office, no employees, nothing. And he had never done anything like that. It was the most exciting thing he’s ever done.

There were a few other speakers, but what they said is foggy to me—I was more invested in this one personally because I thought the connection could possibly get me an internship at Coca-Cola, whose headquarters is right across from Georgia Tech. Didn’t pan out, possibly because I was slow on follow-up.

Meeting Up

I had meetups and conversations with about 4-5 people in the group. The most significant part about this is that it’s a cohort—75 of us go forth in a new country, creating friendships and national/international networks. Based on my experiences, “initiation periods” such as the start of college, the start of a summer program, the start of an internship, etc. are how new friend groups tend to form.

I’ve been reading some Tim Ferriss and his thoughts on “the New Rich,” and I personally believe that the college network, as long as it’s sufficiently good enough, may be less important compared to creating a broad international network of people you meet through programs, fellowships, and internships.

There’s also significant worth in doing this as a group—individually going to Germany can be accomplished many ways: Fulbright, DAAD, au pair, or exchange program. But these can be difficult because of how alone you are, and how much to need to set up. The one disadvantage of a cohort is that everyone might speak to each other in English.

I really liked the people I did meet, even if it was for a short period of time. I wish I could’ve gone on the program with them. I’m also glad for those I met during my fall internship at BMW in Greenville, and I wonder what my life will be like many years down the road now that I have met them.

In Conclusion

The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals, without a doubt, is more of a self-driven program than one with programmed learning. I declined the 38th, which is going on in Germany right now, because I didn’t feel comfortable finding a rewarding internship having just changed majors from Mechanical Engineering to Computer Science. Sure, I could definitely find an internship in Germany. But I’ve learned that you can be in a new, beautiful place, and still have a terrible time. They first put me as an alternate for the 38th because I personally believe they found the fact that I recently changed majors as a risk.

I applied for the 39th cohort, but there’s a risk of it being canceled again due to more COVID restrictions and variants. It’s possible they may decide to scrap the exchange program altogether, and the new German government may have new opinions. Although it’s my fourth time applying for this program, I don’t think I can try to apply again if I don’t manage to do it this year—I have to finish my Bachelor’s, Master’s, and start building a worthwhile life rather than moving around every few months. I first applied at the end of high school because I wanted to do a gap year so I could get into a good college. Got it the second time around, but COVID happened. I really wanted to go to a good college, but in retrospect I just didn’t have enough information to know what I wanted.

If I do end up getting and doing the 39th, I’ll post a lot more about it, such as the application process, the timeline, events, conclusions, and more. But as of now I’m only going to leave you with what I did in the virtual exchange session and my future hopes.

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