My Week at the Student Leadership Conference

Author: Emre, a Student Ambassador in Türkiye, has a deep passion for computers, science, and technology. However, he also likes to share stories in the form of writing, big or small.

This year, Hudson Global Scholars opened up the International Leadership Conference at the International Olympic Academy in Olympia, Greece — and I was lucky enough to be able to take part. I went in not really knowing what to expect. I came home having made friends from around the world, and honestly, that's the part I still can't quite believe.

Before the journey itself, a bit about the premise: alongside improving ourselves, our main goal was our capstone projects. We had to team up with people who'd picked the same project, and everything — the projects, a map of the International Olympic Academy (IOA from here on), a journal, a portfolio section, our schedule, even a leaderboard for completed exercises — lived on a website we checked constantly. Before my flight, I filled out my onboarding info and arranged with our supervisor, Mr. Kalofonos, to be picked up at the airport.

Arrival

Funny tip if you didn't know: if someone's holding a sign with your name or the event's name on it at the airport, they're there for you. After being picked up, I met a few other students, and we made the roughly 5-hour drive from Athens to Olympia, arriving around 15:30. After a short rest, we were called to the cafeteria and given our first task: talk to someone for two minutes, then report back something interesting about them. My first conversation was with a 17-year-old from Greece. More students, including a group from Colombia and Peru, kept trickling in through the night. I went to sleep already sure this was going to be a good week.

Settling in

The first full day felt looser right away. We did icebreaker exercises in the lecture halls — writing something interesting about each person on paper, then (awkwardly) being asked to find something less interesting about someone, which basically nobody could bring themselves to do. Two students from Japan arrived and joined the group mid-exercise. By dinner that night, the table had shifted from polite small talk to actual conversation, and I could feel the group starting to click.

Lectures, capstones, and a stele

Things picked up from there. We attended lectures, locked in our capstone groups, and took our first walk into town — a trip that was as exhausting as it was fun (pro tip: if a shop offers to show you "torches," you might be in for a surprise). We also visited the stele of Pierre de Coubertin, the man who revived the modern Olympic Games. I learned his heart is buried beneath it, exactly as he'd asked.

My group's capstone became a digital short story about the IOA, Ancient Olympia, and Olympic values — built, fittingly, around the idea of friendship. Over the following days we split our time between lectures, capstone work, and more evenings in town. A visit to the Olympic Library had us reading through Olympic history (some people skipped lunch just to keep going), and the 2004 Olympic Archives were a highlight — torches, plushies, old photographs, even athletes' training schedules and diet plans from that Games. It was genuinely fascinating, enough that most of us skipped going to town that night just to keep hanging out together.

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Presenting, and the Acropolis

By day five we'd finished and presented our capstones, checked the leaderboard with Mr. Harris one last time, and used our free afternoon for a final trip into town (I came home with a hoodie as a souvenir).

The last full day was the biggest one: we travelled to Athens, and when a lot of the Greek students went home, the rest of us went to the Acropolis Museum and then hiked up to the Acropolis itself. The climb was tiring, but the view made it worth every step.

What it didn't prepare us for was the storm on the way back — genuinely horrendous rain that had us running for the hotel. Once it passed, we regrouped, went to dinner, and ended the night with ice cream and a walk through the streets before heading back for the last time.

That night, everyone said their goodbyes. I left the next morning at 7 a.m. — my roommate kindly took my luggage down to the lobby for me — and said goodbye to my friends one more time before heading to the airport.

Coming home

I won't bore you with the flight home. What I will say is that this experience left me feeling lighter, like something had been lifted off me — and it gave me friends from literally around the world, from Greece to Japan to Colombia and Peru. It's close to indescribable, so I won't try to say more than that. I'll just say this: go for it next year if you get the chance. You won't regret it.