
By Trevor Stankiewicz L’23
In the middle of mashing potatoes and making stuffing, I received a text message that read: “Now, what do you mean when you say ‘rolls’?”
Throughout my time at law school, I have been focused on international law with an emphasis on human rights. Making the decision to spend one of my six precious semesters away from Philadelphia was difficult, but it ultimately led to an extremely rewarding experience that provided me with a new perspective and an awareness of how the law can operate within the international system.
This had been my goal: to further my understanding of international human rights by immersing myself in a non-US perspective, both building upon and challenging American scholarship. I enrolled in classes such as International Criminal Law: Core Crimes and Context; The International Law of Self-Determination; Human Rights in the Workplace; and European Human Rights Law.
I was attending an LLM program at LSE, so I was surrounded by lawyers from all around the world who had already been practicing law in their home countries. Though this was initially an intimidating prospect given that I had only two years of law school behind me, I was quickly reassured by my classmates’ generosity with their knowledge.
While discussing the role of unions in employment law, for example, I learned from my Australian
I was also able to learn beyond the classroom, visiting museums, monuments, and libraries. I was routinely humbled by the power of London’s tremendous cultural history. There were obvious places that I could not wait to visit, such as the Churchill War Rooms and the British Library. But it was the unplanned encounters that truly made London special. Walking down an ordinary street one day, for example, I was startled to find myself standing beneath the Edith Cavell Memorial, an incredible sculpture that pays tribute to Cavell’s heroism and sacrifice.
Looking back now on my time in London, I am most grateful for how that experience has informed my vision of the life I want to have once I graduate from Penn Carey Law: a life focused on work that I deeply care about, lived in a place that energizes me, filled with friends who support one other and encourage me to be a better version of myself—a life, ideally, packed with a tasty variety of carbs.