Alumni Spotlight: Anna (Class of 2024)
Building Trust, Setting Boundaries: Anna’s UWC RBC Journey
Anna’s path to UWC began with her father reading a Dutch newspaper and spotting a photograph of a castle. He loves castles, so naturally he clicked through, only to discover it wasn’t just a castle, but a school. UWC Atlantic College in Wales. He kept reading, increasingly intrigued, and then turned to Anna, who had been quietly looking for a change, searching for something different from her school near Frankfurt. “This sounds just like you,” he told her. “Have a look.” She did. When her acceptance came through, not for the castle in Wales but for UWC Robert Bosch College in Germany, there was a flicker of disappointment. But only a flicker. In hindsight, she says now, it was absolutely the best place she could have been. Being in an environment where she already understood the language and the culture gave her room to focus on everything else: the people, the ideas, the growth. And anyway, Freiburg had its own kind of magic, no castle required.
Anna’s two years at RBC were, in her own words, emotionally turbulent. Friendships formed fast and fell apart just as quickly. The intensity of living so closely with so many high-achieving people created both inspiration and pressure, sometimes in equal measure. She remembers the academic environment feeling toxic at times, with students competing invisibly but relentlessly for top grades. It was a choice point for her: chase the sevens or choose something else. She chose something else. “For me, the education gave me so much more on a social level,” she reflects. “I actively decided not to prioritise academics too much, because RBC gave me so much more than just that.”
What she prioritised instead was beyond the classroom – the tech team, the Global Affairs committee, hours spent in the garden eating figs and discovering kiwis, and conversations with staff who always had their doors open. She remembers Global Affairs sessions on the attention economy and forms of protest with Stella Nyanzi as formative moments that stretched her thinking in ways no textbook could. But perhaps the most important lesson came from simply coexisting with people she didn’t always agree with, sometimes people she found genuinely difficult. “You’re stuck with a person for at least a year,” she says. “You have to find ways to get along, or at least coexist, because you’re literally within the same square kilometre.” Learning to set boundaries, to confront rather than avoid, and to respect herself even in uncomfortable situations became skills she didn’t know she was building until she needed them.
After graduating in 2024, Anna flew to Portugal with a friend for a week, then spent the rest of the summer travelling Europe with her parents before heading to New Zealand for nine months on a working holiday. It was there that the RBC lessons showed up most clearly. Knowing when to say no. Standing up for herself in difficult work situations. Prioritising what mattered and letting the rest go. “Setting boundaries and communicating them, I had to learn that at RBC,” she says. “And it was incredibly crucial in New Zealand.” But perhaps the most practical skill she carries with her is something she didn’t fully appreciate until after leaving: time management and prioritisation.
At RBC, with a hundred things constantly demanding attention and never enough hours in the day, she learnt to be ruthlessly selective about where her energy went. “RBC taught me to be okay with the energy and effort I’m able to put into specific things at specific times,” she reflects, “even if that means slightly neglecting other responsibilities.” It’s a skill that continues to serve her now, as she juggles studies, volunteering, hobbies, and building a life in a new country. When she returned from New Zealand, she had just three days to pack before moving to Gothenburg, Sweden, to study International Relations. Six months in, she’s thriving. The coursework feels almost easy after the intensity of RBC, her Global Politics and Anthropology classes prepared her better than she expected, but she keeps herself busy with volunteering, hobbies, and building a life in a city she’s genuinely fallen in love with. She stays in touch with a small, tight group of friends from RBC, and when they met up in Vienna last year, it felt like no time had passed at all.
What Anna values most about her RBC experience isn’t the academics, it’s the trust. The trust the school placed in students to solve their own problems, navigate difficult conversations, and take responsibility for their actions without constant surveillance or intervention. “It was difficult. It was frustrating,” she admits. “But it was the right way to deal with it. I really appreciate the trust that was put in us.” That trust taught her something essential: that she could handle hard things, set her own course, and figure it out as she went. And she’s been doing exactly that ever since.
