Reflections on the Lenox-Conyngham Scholarship Experience

by Tommy de la Hunty

All in all, my experience this past year made possible through the Lenox-Conyngham Scholarship has been truly fantastic, and I am certain that I will look back over the year I spent at McIntire very fondly for the rest of my life. The benefits I received from the scholarship are numerous, however the main one in my opinion was the chance to broaden my educational horizons. Trinity and McIntire both employ very different learning styles and I really benefitted from having the chance to experience both - a rigorous, focused and predominantly solo style of education at Trinity and a more practical, broader and group-work focused one at McIntire. The MS in Commerce program I took, specialising in Finance, has thoroughly prepared me for my future career in the financial sector and was a great complement to my undergraduate degree in Economics from Trinity.

On top of these educational benefits, the scholarship has aided in my own personal development through the travel opportunities it has provided. Of course, living in the United States for the year has been a great experience despite not being the greatest culture shock. On top of Charlottesville I managed to visit Washington DC, New York, New Orleans, Gettysburg and Atlanta over the course of the year! However, the scholarship also allowed me to undertake a week’s travel in Costa Rica with McIntire on one of their Global Commerce Immersion programs which I really enjoyed, touring the nation and learning all about the business of sustainability. Furthermore, I am currently composing this paper in a hotel in Taipei, after a week of travelling in Japan with friends and ahead of my three-week Global Immersion Experience in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong! I am certain that the next few weeks will be a truly unique experience, visiting a vast range of different companies across East Asia and understanding how they operate in a global context. These travel opportunities offered by the scholarship will be hugely beneficial in terms of my own personal development as a young working professional in the global marketplace.

There have also been social benefits I have received from my year at McIntire - I have really enjoyed forming a new network of close friends this side of the Atlantic that I will make every effort to keep in contact with in the coming years. I also really enjoyed all the many sociable experiences that come with being a college student in the USA, from the first football tailgate to the end of year prom. A final and more intimate social benefit has come from getting to know the other Lenox-Conyngham scholars themselves. I was lucky enough to meet with Raj in Charlottesville before he began at Trinity and then again when I was back in the UK, along with Corinne in Cambridge. I also managed to meet up with Alex Russell various times in both New York and Charlottesville as well as having dinner with James Brown and Xavier Bisits In Washington DC over the fall break! I am really looking forward to joining this intimate yet ever growing group of Lenox-Conyngham alumni, having the chance to catch up in future years and to even mentor future scholars when it comes to academic or professional matters.

All of these benefits I have received would not have been possible were it not for the immense generosity of the scholarship, and I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the Anton Schefer Foundation and everyone involved for all the help they have given me this past year.

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