Gracie Waltono
I take Dutch classes. And while mijn Nederlands is… echt niet zo goed, learning a new language is the best way to describe what the LLB in International and European Law, Technology Track felt like for me.
When I was in your shoes, I had absolutely no idea which track to choose. I felt like I was deciding the whole direction of my life at eighteen, which felt slightly disproportionate for a choice made after just one year of law. I ended up choosing Tech, and that turned out to be one of the best decisions I made at university.
The truth is, I wasn't following some big plan. I was curious, and a little worried about locking myself into a path before I'd figured out what I was even good at. Tech law was different because the questions were still open, still being shaped, and that meant I could learn to ask them alongside the people writing the rules.
In first year, law feels stable. You learn the rules, apply the case law, structure your argument properly. If you reason well enough, there's usually a "correct" direction you're supposed to reach.
Tech law doesn't work like that.
Half the time, even the people writing the rules are still trying to figure out what the rules should be. I remember sitting in Data Protection and Human Rights and realising this was completely different from anything we had done before. The exam was open book, and there were no right or wrong answers. What they cared about was seeing how you would solve a specific problem. Getting it right meant making a persuasive case, not repeating a prepackaged conclusion.
Suddenly, you're dealing with questions that feel uncomfortably close to real life. If Instagram tracks teenagers' behaviour to keep them online longer, should that be legal? If Facebook can infer sensitive information about you without you ever explicitly giving it, what counts as consent anymore? There was never one clean answer. In lawyer fashion, I found myself saying "it depends" quite a lot.
Today, with AI being integrated into everything from social media to job application filters, you start noticing things you would have completely missed before. The world is changing very quickly. We don't get to opt out of technology. But we absolutely get to decide whether we understand what it's doing to us.
Another thing I loved: the track is small enough that people actually know who you are. You stop feeling like you're studying under professors and start feeling like you're working with them.
One of my friends is a law student at the University of Indonesia. Last spring, we were talking and noticed that the same words, like "consent" and "legitimate interest," mean totally different things in our two countries. We started asking: why aren't students putting these perspectives next to each other and discussing them properly?
We took this half-baked thought to the professors, and what could have stayed a casual conversation turned into a cross-university event with more than fifty students. That tells you something about the environment here. Curiosity and initiative get taken seriously, and students feel their ideas matter. If two students over an Instagram DM could make that happen, imagine what you could do!
That sense of agency extends to the classroom itself, where everything feels unusually current. It's not unusual to be studying a case one week and then get a live update about that same case, fresh from the CJEU, while you're still making sense of it. University stopped feeling separate from the world outside. You're no longer just a student cramming for an exam; you're part of something larger, and that feeling is exhilarating.
While certainly niche, the Tech track never narrowed my world. During my exchange at the University of Birmingham, I took Public International Law courses typically associated with the regular track. What surprised me was how much my background in tech law strengthened the way I approached them. Understanding how legal systems evolve alongside AI gave me a much sharper sense of how law itself is built, interpreted, and adapted. I came back able to contribute to discussions in a way I couldn’t have before.
Along the way, I realised something else too: foundational law subjects exist at many universities, but the specialised tech law courses you get in Groningen aren't offered just anywhere. I believe that in a landscape where many graduates carry similar foundations, a perspective shaped by technology becomes uniquely your own.
None of this was on my radar when I was sitting where you are now. Beyond the classroom, this track opened doors I never anticipated. I design legal curriculum for high school students, and I'm currently working with the International School of Amsterdam. One of our most requested courses is on AI and human rights. Every school asks for it. They recognise this knowledge is no longer optional.
I'm still taking Dutch classes. My grammar is still atrocious. But learning something new is clumsy before it's useful, and Tech law gave me that same feeling.
At first, the terms are unfamiliar and you wonder if you walked into the wrong room. Then one day you hear something in the news and realise you'd been following along without translating in your head. You've started to speak it.
We're entering a moment where understanding technology is becoming as essential as understanding politics or economics. Right now, there aren't enough people who can speak both the language of law and the language of technology, and the conversation is still taking shape.
If you're willing to stumble through the first few sentences, I promise there's a place for you here.
Gracie Waltono , LLB International and European Law, Technology Law Track