ERASMUS CHANGING LIVES OPENING MINDS fOR 25 YEARS

Tadas
Zukas
‘It opened a new world for me’
Home institution:
Mykolas Romeris University,
Lithuania (formerly Law University
of Lithuania)
Host institution:
Christian Albrechts University
of Kiel, Germany
Field of study:
Law
Duration:
6 months (2001)
When Tadas Zukas set off on an Erasmus exchange to Kiel in 2001, he knew little
about his destination. ‘It wasn’t far from Lithuania and it was one of the few
partnerships we had.’ Only later did he learn that the university’s law faculty
enjoyed an international reputation.
Curious and ambitious, he was overwhelmed by the facilities. ‘I was studying in
a small young country that was reforming its laws and there were almost no books,
and then I went to Germany where there are 20 books on every subject and hundreds
of years of experience.’ He went to every lecture he could and studied hard.
What struck him most, though, was the friendly contact between lecturers and students.
‘Exams were not this huge stress where the professor tries to find out what
you don’t know,’ he says. He earned the highest possible marks in his courses,
then went home and graduated top of his class. A year later he was selected by
the European Commission as Lithuania’s one millionth Erasmus student.
‘The experience opened a new world for me,’ he says. After graduating, he got
a scholarship to study for a Masters (LL.M.) in international business law in
Zurich, where he also worked in the legal department of Siemens. Some years
later, he passed the Bar Exam in Vilnius and graduated summa cum laude with
a PhD in law from Lucerne University in Switzerland. He is now working for a leading
Swiss law firm and has recently completed an internship in New York. ‘Looking
back after 10 years I can connect the dots and see my Erasmus exchange was the
first step in my international career.’
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