For policy studies major and aspiring attorney Will Conrad, a trip to Scotland to intern with a member of the Scottish Parliament was an easy fit. He’d already spent several years at Rice studying everything from American Southern history and government to Soviet and post-Soviet policy. He’s served on University Court, and he spent a summer working for the State Office of Risk Management here in Texas. And after going on a mission trip to Juarez, Mexico, then traveling to the Czech Republic last year, heading to Scotland must have been a piece of cake.

And it was—with a little help from Jean Ashmore in the Office of Disability Services at Rice. Will’s blindness means that he has to do a little more preparation for everything than most other students. Ashmore made the trip with him and stayed a few weeks to help coordinate things and smooth his way. But according to Will, he wasn’t a bit nervous about the trip itself; he was more concerned about the internship with Member of Scottish Parliament Kate Maclean, who represents Dundee. He needn’t have worried, though. “Rice classes were so much harder than anything I had to do in Scotland. Our most important question at night wasn’t what work do we have to do, but which pub and what drink?” he laughs. “I’m only half-joking!” he adds, over a plate of fish and chips in Houston’s Black Lab. He is humorously critical that this American version of a British pub does not serve the “mushy peas” that would authenticate the dish.

Joking aside, Will says that he learned a lot about government in the United Kingdom and Scotland through his five weeks of classes and 10-week internship. His classes covered British and Scottish politics and Scottish culture and society. And in his internship, he was assigned to work on a program that attempts to disperse civil servants across Scotland. “Most of their civil servants are in just Edinburgh and Glasgow,” he explains. “Yet Dundee, Kate’s area, is set up very well for that too. It’s a big city and has lots of opportunity, and socially and economically, it’s had a lot of decline. So adding civil servants there could be a way to help the city. Kate wanted me to determine if the members of Parliament had properly fulfilled the policy they had set up and if they’d looked at Dundee as much as they should have.”

Will particularly enjoyed working with Kate because he “got to spend a lot of time with her and got to know her really well.” He also had a chance to travel to Dundee when his family arrived to visit in December. His family also met Kate, and he had his picture taken with the first minister of Scotland. He and his family then traveled to Inverness, and on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas), they had dinner with the family of a fellow student that Will met at the University of Edinburgh.

In addition to his internship and class work, Will became involved with a church group near the university. “The Buccleuch Free Church of Scotland was within walking distance,” he says. “It’s a smaller, conservative Presbyterian denomination. The ‘Free Church’ indicates that it is separate from the Church of Scotland, the large nationally sponsored church.” It was through attending church that he met most of the Scots he socialized with. And much of that socialization took place in pubs.

“Frequenting pubs is kind of the thing to do there,” he says. “And there’s definitely no sleaziness associated with it as there can be with bars here.” Will became a regular at some of the pubs and even picked out a favorite ale, McEwan’s 80, which is purported to be sold at a pub in nearby Rice Village. “I’m looking forward to checking it out,” Will says.

And though he enjoyed his trip and learned a lot, “I’m glad to be back at Rice,” he admits. “It’s such a close-knit community here. It’s a comfortable little bubble in the fourth-largest city in the States.”

Class: International Intrigue - Lorenzo Di Silvio

—by M. Ynonne Taylor
Photos by Tommy LaVergne
and Jeff Fitlow