What Comes Next

It has been almost five months again since I updated my blog. Time simply flies, or in other words I don’t really put so much effort into maintaining this site. Not really sure who still reads this, what kind of information any of my visitors is looking for, well, and more importantly, what kind of message I want to bring across with this whole thing. The occasional update here serves as a sort of hint of what is going in my life, but doesn’t reveal too much really of how I feel about it, what kind of thoughts go through my mind (isn’t that content of a typical blog?)…
Oh well… this update has a reason of course, I’m almost midway through my last semester here in the Netherlands, about to start new adventures. Right now, I’m still keeping myself busy with my last four courses (plus one in the summer), namely micro- and macroeconomics, international development cooperation (which is mostly about foreign aid), International Relations, and my Honour’s Thesis (see previous post) that is about ‘land grabbing’ and how foreign investors buy up large amounts of farmland in developing countries to boost their own food security, which turns out to be fatal on the local level…
In the summer I’ll be going to New York, as part of another course which is titled ‘geographical field course’ that deals with urban planning mostly, urban policies, and the like. I’m very excited to see New York City!

Summer 1 or 2
There are two possible scenarios afterwards. Either I will be interning for three months with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in the department of ‘Regional Development Policy / Middle East’. Or I will have to do a summer course (in economics) at LSE as part of my condition to being able to pursue a Master’s there. I’m in the process of asking to wave that condition as I’m currently taking the same course in the Netherlands and it would be doing the same thing twice – plus a good amount of money to be spent for LSE’s summer course, and no money (and experience) from my internship.

Master’s
After having waited for about two months I finally received a response from LSE. Accepted! That’s fantastic news, as the programme I applied to there is the one that fascinates me the most. Although I initially had planned to do a master’s in development studies I changed the course of direction in a way I thought would be more appropriate to later on have a bigger impact. Development work is extremely challenging due to a variety of factors. I have seen this through my work with NGOs and UNDP as well as through my field work, research papers and all the other theoretical/practical university coursework. Yet, to make this as short a statement as possible, ‘real’ change (or say, change that leads to a sustainable and desirable outcome) needs more than local-level passion – it needs comprehensive government support, hence functioning government institutions. And that’s where I thought it’d be simply useful to get acquainted with processes and tools that are used to improve and analyse what’s going on on that level: thus, policy-making, policy analysis, public administration, public management.
In the end it’s all in a way connected to what happens in the public sector in developing countries. My seemingly never-ending research of (good) universities and even better programmes climaxed in what is called the MPA International Development at LSE.
Although I haven’t heard back from most other places I’ve applied to (Columbia in New York, a very similar programme but more focused on policy analysis in general; Tokyo, a programme rather focused on public policy; Berlin, also specialised on public policy in general; as well as University College London, development planning and administration), I’m certain I will be going to LSE. Whether I will make use of the opportunity to obtain a double degree (which means I could go to New York, Berlin, Singapore or Paris in my second year) is a great option to keep in mind, but I will have to see about that in due time…

For now, a lot of paper work is enthusiastically anticipating me handling it and I shouldn’t lose focus on maintaining my level in my last semester!
And back to what I wrote at the beginning, I will think about ways of improving and changing this blog somehow.. we’ll see…