Hi! My name is Anika Gupta, and I’m a rising sophomore from Martel majoring in Mechanical Engineering. I’m currently in the iSEED Amsterdam and Paris program taking the business class.
I didn’t really know anything about Rice until around my senior year. One of my friends from school was attending Rice and told my mom about it, who told me I should apply because it was near NASA. My dream is to be an astronaut, and once I heard it was near NASA, I was sold. I visited, loved the campus, and applied early decision. I’ve always loved learning how things work, so I decided to major in mechanical engineering.
I chose to study abroad because I wanted some credits and I liked the idea of living abroad for a short amount of time. I was very excited about exploring Amsterdam as I have never been here before. Usually I’m very touristy when I visit new cities, because I’m with my family. We have set activities and go out to eat good food and relax and take Ubers. However, now that I’m more by myself, I’m thinking I should approach it differently. While I do enjoy planning many things and checking all the tourist spots off, I want to just walk around and explore the city without a goal. I also want to approach the city with the view of someone who lives here.
It was nice to meet students from the University of Amsterdam. I was surprised that they weren’t mostly Dutch, and I was also surprised by how nice and welcoming they were. They just accepted that I was a part of their group and started working. I’d like to make friends with more of them and maybe hang out with them outside of class time. I am looking forward to seeing them again, and doing more work on the design challenge!