Yannik Kellmann Summa Cum Laude in International Security

If there's one thing I always tried to stick to, it's to keep a cool head even when everything around you is amazing and dazzling. You're surrounded by people who are sharp, driven, and often already accomplished. So, despite all the smart people around me, and despite the kind of communal excitement that builds right before exams or a big assignment is due, I tried hard not to get pulled away from my own instincts about how to approach a problem or how to prepare for it. It's easy to feel stressed the moment you start comparing yourself to what others are doing around you, people spending nearly every weekday evening in the library, working on one assignment while sitting in a completely different class. I tried to tune that out and stick to my own estimates of how much time something actually needed, and to approach problems pragmatically rather than exhaustively. If anything, that was easier for me than for some others, since I came in with no prior background in political or social science and so had nothing familiar to measure myself against in the first place.

Despite that, I believe that I wasn’t actually very efficient during my first year when looking back to it now. I spent too much time reading, reworking the same sentence over and over, circling a concept for ages before I let myself write a first draft. That kind of approach was only possible because I had the time to afford it. Plus, there was still enough time to go out every other night and watch one or two tv shows. But, by my second year, there was no room left for perfect phrasing or a nicely formatted page. So I put whatever time I had into the one thing that mattered, coming up with ideas and arguments worth debating, which I'd already noticed during my first year was what professors at PSIA actually rewarded. There's a natural pull toward filling pages, summarizing the literature at length, reaching for elaborate phrasing, and I understand the appeal. But when time is tight, it's the critical discussion, the willingness to put forward something that actually challenges the reading, that ends up getting rewarded.

By going to PSIA, I left the track of becoming a lawyer and diversified my academic background substantively. It took some courage but, in a sense, PSIA is probably the reason I have my current job. During my first year, I applied for a gap year position at the German Federal Ministry of Defence, and I believe it was specifically having taken that detour to Paris that made me a serious candidate. I got the job, and I've stayed ever since. 

Beyond that, two things from the programme show up in my daily work almost every week. The first is practical: time management and the actual skill of writing a policy brief, condensing something complicated into a few pages that someone senior can act on. That's close to what my job asks of me most days, so it wasn't really a transition, it was more like continuing something I'd already started practicing at PSIA. The second is that I lost my fear of contact with people from high politics. There's something about sharing a stuffy classroom in the Paris summer heat with former ministers and generals that resets your sense of hierarchy. You realize everybody in that room has the right to speak up, no matter how senior anyone else looks on paper, and that if you have something relevant to say, you should just say it. In my daily work now, I deal regularly with people quite high up in the hierarchy. I imagine most people arrive at a natural, comfortable way of dealing with that over years on the job, but PSIA, I think, got me there much faster.

One more lesson from my time at PSIA has stayed with me: eloquence and substance aren't always the same thing. Some of the most polished, confident delivery I encountered at PSIA had surprisingly little behind it, and some of the most valuable contributions came wrapped in far less impressive packaging. In my job today, long, elaborate explanations tend to set off an alarm bell. Everyone in my line of work is trained to keep points short and precise, because time is often the scarcest resource, and far-reaching decisions sometimes have to be made with very little of it. Too many words, too complex sentences or too much unnecessary detail, can distract decision-makers who are already facing dozens of decision points in a single day. None of this means eloquence isn't worth pursuing. It's more that I think that language itself is a form of power, a power to influence how others see a problem, and it's worth being conscious of that power and using it deliberately rather than letting it get away from you.

When I arrived at PSIA, I felt slightly intimidated by the name and the reputation attached to it. I also had no real insight into how the French higher education system worked. Looking back, I think everybody arriving there is grappling with some version of the same feeling. What eventually settled it for me was noticing how PSIA operates in practice: it brings in experts, politicians, and figures known well beyond Paris, and treats you as someone worth debating with at eye level. That's when the facade and the elitist flair around the institution start to fall away, and what's left is just people, their passions, their willingness to take on hard problems, and a shared intellectual curiosity that doesn't care where you're from. No matter your background, you deserve to be in that room as much as anyone else, so don't be afraid to speak up and make your voice heard.

Also, don't be too impressed by how organized or disciplined the people around you seem. You'll see classmates with elaborate routines, colour-coded notes, entire systems for how they study, and it's easy to assume you need one too. I'd resist that. Try to find your own way of approaching problems instead of forcing habits onto yourself that were never really yours to begin with.