Lily Wu, CGIS Peer Advisor: Can you introduce yourself, please?
Britta Pingree: I’m Britta, and I use she/her pronouns. I’m a fourth-year undergraduate student, but I will be taking a fifth. I am a dual degree student majoring in Biomolecular Science and French Horn Performance. The program that I recently completed was Global Health and Development Policy in Nyon, Switzerland, in the Geneva area. I did that in summer 2025.
LW: What made you interested in studying abroad versus staying in U-M over the summer?
BP: Well, I’ve had friends and family members who’ve told me about their experiences abroad when they were in college, and that if it’s feasible, it’s a really good opportunity to experience education and life in another part of the world. All of my summers in college up to this point, I’d been working or doing other classes, so I wanted to change it up and study abroad before I graduate.
LW: How did you get interested in the program Global Health and Development Policy in Geneva?
BP: I remember thinking, over winter break, that I was interested in studying abroad, so I dug around on the CGIS website and found this program. I looked at all the various programs offered in different countries and that appealed to me as a Biomolecular Science major. I want to go to graduate school and eventually go into the workforce, hopefully into a public sphere with science policy. So, with this program being in Geneva, with guest speakers and visits to places like the UN headquarters, the WHO, the Global Health Fund, and Doctors Without Borders, was really appealing to me. I would love to do that kind of work in my future. Switzerland and the Geneva area, in particular, is extremely international, and it was so cool to see what I care about from a worldly perspective.
LW: What was a typical day in your life like over there? What was your day to day schedule?
BP: I had a homestay experience, which I really loved. I would wake up in my host mom’s house and go to class every morning, which was about a 10 minute walk to the train stop and then a 35 minute train ride southeast to the main city plaza. The building that held our classes was located there. It was common, after class in the afternoon, to socialize with other peers and, for example, take a ferry from Geneva into France, or get some pastries at a bakery. Even though I had classes and work, though, it felt very work-life balanced and oriented where I was located, so I feel that I got a lot of unique exposure because of that.
LW: Are there any local activities you’d recommend?
BP: Yeah, as far as Switzerland itself, I recommend listening to yourself because it’s important when you’re in a new country to get acclimated. Switzerland is very unique, being close to a lot of other countries, so I had the advantage of traveling to France and Germany and different parts of Switzerland. I recommend doing that, but also not tiring yourself out. Within Switzerland, I loved being in the Alps and doing a lot of hiking there.
LW: How was the academic experience different than at U-M?
BP: The academic experience was a different vibe. I took an Introductory French class and my core Global Health and Development Policy class—that second class, I would say, was more interdisciplinary than I expected. The teaching style was also [unique], with one hefty exam and a long research project. The way that research is thought of, and that information is communicated in an academic setting, I found to be different from U-M. In my experience, in the American educational system, when you’re given a task, you’re also given bullet points of what to tackle or what to do; your job as a thinker is how to execute that. I felt the European system gave less direction; there was more of a mentality of figuring it out along the way. I learned this after I got points taken off of an essay, and I was like, they didn’t say in the directions to specifically do this in particular, so how was I supposed to know to do it? The European style was interesting because eventually I did figure it out and learn new things.
LW: What was the housing like?
BP: Through CGIS and the partner program, SIT, there was a housing coordinator who helped us. Before arriving in Switzerland, we had to fill out questionnaires about ourselves, and she assigned us to a host family. Most people lived about 20 or 30 minutes out from the school, and would take a train and bus, or just one, to get to class. I stayed in a village in the French part of Switzerland, actually a close drive to France. It was in the mountains, so on summer days when the city plaza would feel really hot and steamy, it was a full 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at my host mom’s house because it was at a higher elevation, which I was a big fan of. She lived in a chalet, which was pretty common in her area. She had three cats and two college-aged children, and one would come home on a few occasions, so I got to know him. It was a very fun time.
LW: Was there any language barrier?
BP: I heard that some other people had more of one, but in my experience, no. My host mom was very sweet and our personalities meshed really well. Her native tongue is French, but she also speaks English fluently, even though she was very apologetic—I kept telling her I could understand everything she was saying. It’s common for kids’ native language to be based on where they live in Switzerland, and then they learn English in school, so that’s why a lot of Swiss also speak English. At the equivalent of middle or high school, too, they have to learn one of the other official languages, so if they’re in the French part, they choose either German or Italian. My host mom spoke German as well, so she was trilingual. I find that very impressive because it’s just not something you come across, at least in the US, every day. But it’s very common in Switzerland for people to be bilingual, trilingual.
LW: Is there a story or an anecdote that you’d like to share that still sticks with you?
BP: Yeah, so many. Aside from having a great host mom, I just remember, initially, descending into the Geneva airport and it was the prettiest descent out of the airplane window that I’d ever seen, with rolling hills and rivers. Beyond that, I remember a few things in particular. One was hiking around the Matterhorn, the most famous mountain in the Alps, which was an experience I’ll always cherish.
Another thing I’ll always remember is how in other parts of the world, borders aren’t really a thing or considered as big of a deal as they are here [in the US]. My family in Michigan lives 35 minutes from the Canadian border, actually, so I know that sometimes getting across the border becomes a big process with a lot of questions. It can feel weird and scary for some people, absolutely. When my friends and I would take the ferry to France, though, no one checked for our passport or asked what we were doing there. That’s how some people commute to work every day.
One weekend, I took a train from my host mom’s house, and after two stops I was at the French-Swiss border. I walked across a crosswalk and was in France; there were no border guards or anything, just a little marker. I had a nice walk and ran through the meadows and saw some cows in France, and when I was ready, I just walked back to Switzerland. It was crazy to me, as an American, being able to do that and think about how the world really doesn’t have any boundaries. I hope I get to explore more countries with that mentality.
LW: What are you most proud of doing while you were?
BP: I was proud of exploring in a place that I wasn’t accustomed to at first and navigating the train systems, especially when I took trains into other countries. That made me feel really adult. I think I’m also proud of myself for trying something new and for doing something academically in another part of the world that is different from that I’m used to at U-M. I’m also proud of all the people I got to meet and create connections with.
LW: If you’re willing to share, do you feel that there's any part of your identity that shaped your experience abroad?
BP: I would say there wasn’t anything I realized that impacted me in a negative way. I think in any country, there’s the obvious stuff and then there are undertones and subtleties in any culture. It was interesting to compare to the US, even though the US is so different within itself in that East Coast culture is different from Midwest culture, which is different from Southern culture, and so on. Compared to the broad “US,” though, in Switzerland, I found that sexual orientation and transgender people didn’t make people angry. I didn’t see as many pride flags as I did in Ann Arbor, but I did see a mutual respect, [even] an indifferent attitude. People didn’t have any hang-ups about that.
LW: If you’re willing to share, do you feel that there's any part of your identity that shaped your experience abroad?
BP: I would say there wasn’t anything I realized that impacted me in a negative way. I think in any country, there’s the obvious stuff and then there are undertones and subtleties in any culture. It was interesting to compare to the US, even though the US is so different within itself in that East Coast culture is different from Midwest culture, which is different from Southern culture, and so on. Compared to the broad “US,” though, in Switzerland, I found that sexual orientation and transgender people didn’t make people angry. I didn’t see as many pride flags as I did in Ann Arbor, but I did see a mutual respect, [even] an indifferent attitude. People didn’t have any hang-ups about that.
LW: What differences in culture did you observe?
BP: Europe often gets a reputation of being very homogenous, and I thought that where I was would be racially homogenous, but in Geneva in particular, the UN headquarters actually pulls in so many people from other countries. Geneva really did feel like a cultural melting pot; French was not the only language I was hearing on the streets, and neither was English.
Another thing I observed out in public was that there was a much more social and communal vibe in Switzerland. Society didn’t feel so individualistic and cutthroat. They didn’t do hustle culture, they did work-life balance. My host mom was telling me, for example, that companies are required to give women a set amount of paid maternity leave; the maternal mortality rate is also much lower in Switzerland than it is in the US, and the pay gap is nothing like it is in the US. It felt like because of the way that society operated, people respected women more in Switzerland than in the US. There were also so many times when I’d see groups of kids, probably around the age of 10, already bilingual, casually on the trains and in the city plazas. Children in Switzerland are considered part of society; parents teach them young how to have a sense of independence. Everyone around is also looking out for them, treating them like functioning and contributing members of society.
LW: What was the biggest challenge you faced while abroad?
BP: The biggest challenge was just missing friends and family, even while I was making new connections and new friends. Another one was the train schedule, figuring out exactly when I need to leave and the logistics of a place that isn’t native to you. That did take very long to figure out, and then I was good. But for sure, you have to think about these things and plan.
LW: If you’re comfortable sharing, did you receive any scholarships or funding help?
BP: I received two. One was a travel grant from LSA Honors College, and the other was from the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasian Studies.
Have questions for Britta? Reach out to her at bpingree@umich.edu. Explore CGIS programs here!
