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A version shaped by growing up in a marginalized community back home in Zimbabwe, the kind of community where a fully funded semester in Northern Europe felt like something that happened to other people, not to girls like me. That version looked at the word "Latvia," a country she'd barely heard of, on an exchange program list and thought that's too far, too cold, too unfamiliar for someone like me. I am so glad she didn't win.
My name is Cathrine Phiri, and I was one of the exchange students who went on the Erasmus Mundus exchange to Riga Technical University. I'm writing this for every young woman reading it from a kasi, a township, a marginalized corner of the world that isn't supposed to produce people who end up on stages in Europe.
I want to tell you honestly: nobody prepares you for how much you will grow when you say yes to the unfamiliar not the brochures, not the orientation packs, not even the other students who've done it before you. You only learn it by living it.
What Surprised Me About Riga
The first thing that humbled me was the weather. I had never lived through snow, never had to plan my day around a bus schedule in freezing temperatures, never understood what it meant to layer up just to walk to a lecture hall but what surprised me most wasn't the cold it was how quickly I adapted.
Evening classes ran from 18:15 to as late as 10 or 11pm, and I learned that discipline isn't a personality trait. It's a muscle. You build it by showing up, even when your body is still adjusting to a new climate and a new rhythm of life.
I was also surprised by how practical the education was for international students. This wasn't sit-and-listen learning. We had intensive weeks, group projects at the end of every semester, and courses I didn't even realize I'd signed up for like an entrepreneurship and product design module that turned out to be rooted in architecture. Picture this: I'm an Information Management and Technology student, with zero architecture background, suddenly sitting in a class titled Innovative Product Design and Entrepreneurship that ran as an intensive week from 9am to 7pm.
And that wasn't even my whole day I still had other classes to attend in between, then evening lectures afterward. So my days looked like this: attend part of my regular classes, rush back into the innovative product design course, then head straight into an evening class. No breaks in between to "figure it out." You just kept moving. It was one of the hardest stretches of my exchange, but it taught me that you don't need a background in something to hold your own in the room you need the will to keep showing up.
Startup development meant real group work, building something from nothing. International marketing meant a lecturer who locked the door if you were late because in the real world, opportunity doesn't wait for you either.
Attendance was tracked electronically, every scan a small reminder: discipline is not punishment, it is preparation.
Even history became something I had to live, not memorize. To pass History of Latvia, you didn't just study you visited the museums yourself. Some lessons can't be taught from a seat. They have to be walked into. I still remember my first presentation in that class I didn't yet know how to use their advanced classroom technology systems, and I fumbled through some real technical challenges in front of everyone. But I got through it. That's the thing nobody tells you about firsts in a new country: you're not expected to be smooth. You're only expected to keep going.
What Was Harder Than Expected
Community. Building it, finding it, trusting it that was harder than any exam. I was far from Zimbabwe, far from everything familiar, in a country where I had to actively seek out spaces that felt like home. Some days that was heavier than others. I was often the only Black girl in the classroom, and there were moments that felt genuinely uncomfortable sitting in rooms full of people speaking Latvian, some of whom didn't understand English either, and feeling the quiet weight of being the only one who looked like me. I won't pretend that was easy. But I learned to sit in that discomfort without letting it shrink me.
That search for belonging led me to CeMeWe, an organization supporting immigrant women, and it reminded me of something I now tell every young woman I mentor: you are allowed to go looking for your people. Belonging is not always waiting for you sometimes you have to build the door yourself and knock.
Then there was the day I fell sick. In Zimbabwe, when you're unwell, you go to the clinic. In Latvia, I learned the hard way that healthcare doesn't always work that way, I was told I needed to book an appointment before I could even be seen at the hospital. Sick, alone, and far from home, having to navigate a booking system just to get help was one of the most disorienting moments of my exchange. It taught me a kind of resourcefulness I didn't know I had how to advocate for myself in a system that owed me no familiarity.
The Moments That Changed Me
If you had told me before I left that I would stand on a stage at Riga Technical University's Career Day sharing my story, I might not have believed you. But I did and I walked away with an appreciation gift, a flask, and an RTU alumni glass that I still hold onto, not for what they are, but for what they represent: proof that my voice mattered in rooms I never imagined entering.
I was accepted into a fully funded Digital Works for Youth program in Poland, sitting alongside young people from Latvia and Romania, and left with a certificate and a mind expanded beyond borders. I attended the Deep Tech Atelier international conference.
I presented my own cyber security project, Mvikele, at the Women's Health and Well-Being event organized by Unidoor and received a certificate and a hamper from Drogas for it. I volunteered with Riga Tech Girls, working behind the scenes on the speaker and stage team, learning that empowerment isn't only found on stage sometimes it's in the quiet work of making sure other women get their stage.
I celebrated Europe Day, moving between embassy stands from different countries, and stood present for Latvia's Restoration Day small moments that reminded me how much richer the world becomes when you let yourself be a guest in someone else's history.
What I'd Tell a Student Applying Next Year
Say yes before you feel ready. You will never feel fully prepared for the cold, the language barrier, being the only one who looks like you in the room, navigating a foreign hospital system alone, or the punishing intensive-week schedules and none of that is a sign you don't belong there. It's simply the price of growth.
Go looking for your community the moment you land. Say yes to the extra program, the extra conference, the extra stage even the ones that feel intimidating.
Every certificate, every hamper, every flask I came home with is really just evidence of a woman who kept choosing herself, one opportunity at a time.
To every young woman reading this from a marginalized community from a kasi, a township, a background the world didn't expect much from wondering if a life like this is even for you: it is. Nobody hands girls like us these opportunities. We have to go looking, apply anyway, and say yes before we feel ready.
Your background is not your ceiling. It is your foundation. Go. Build. Rise.
She Leads, We Rise.
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