Come Fly with Me!

So long, America!

I'm headed back to the UK today after spending time with a close friend, being an editor at the Journal of Public and International Affairs reading weekend, and spending several days at home.

I'll be posting on the other side of the pond, next time! 

2nd Year as a LSE JPIA Editor

If you missed it, I'm in the United States for a week! 

I flew in last Thursday in advance of the reading weekend for the Journal of Public and International Affairs. 

The reading weekend kicked off on Friday, so Thursday night was a reunion night with one of my best friends. I hadn't seen my friend Kasey since graduation weekend at Syracuse in 2012. 

Short story: Kasey was a sophomore on my floor, my freshman year, and we've been in the same group of friends ever since! She picked me up from the airport, went to dinner, and just caught up as if we had saw each other yesterday. 

Kasey and me 

I spent the rest of Thursday evening and much of Friday at the hotel I had booked doing work for my capstone and applying for jobs. Thank goodness for the Starbucks in the lobby!

Friday evening was the kickoff of the JPIA Reading Weekend.  As you may recall from last year, I traveled to Princeton as the first year representative.  It's a two- year position, so last term, I selected the new first-year student for LSE.  

Friday evening was spent doing introductions, reading the first round of papers, and getting to know others. It was great seeing some of my friends that I met through last year's reading weekend as well. 

Woodrow Wilson of Public and International Affairs 

Saturday was the main day of the weekend. Starting at 8am, it really was a reading and scoring day. Not without a few breaks and getting to know others,  I think I read close to 40 papers throughout the day.  Some were in my areas of expertise, but others were not. That was the aim of the preliminary reading: to ensure that people who are not specialists in an area can understand the policy paper/article. 

Princeton's Campus 

By the end of the evening, we had selected the final nine papers for this year's publication. A close friend of mine from the MPA program was selected for publication this year!  Congrats, Naomi!

The evening ended with a Princeton MPA party. And, as it was last year, my fellow LSE MPA students, we can still claim the prize for better parties! 

Princeton's Campus 

Sunday was the wrap-up day. I left a little earlier to catch the train to Newark as I'm now home for a few days. It was a great weekend getting to contribute to editing a prestigious journal, getting to know other future policy makers (including a few current SU grad students), and taking it all in. The past two years in my role as a contributing editor were two years that I wouldn't pass up! 

"Spoonful of Sugar"

Well, if you cannot tell from the title of this blog, I've come down with my usual fall cold/sinus infection. The weather, lack of sleep, and being around my peers who have also been sick contributed to my sickness for the past few days. Thankfully, today, I'm finally feeling better. Surviving on OTC medicine I brought from the US, it was clear that I should have registered with the NHS earlier on. I'll be doing that next week, so if I get sick again, I can at least get some prescription medicine.

Despite being under the weather, I've had a fairly busy week. Monday-Wednesday, I had something due in all my classes. For the most part, the assignments that have been due aren't graded. A lot of them are for feedback which is nice, especially with economics! We had our first big STATA problem set due this week in econometrics. That could be graded since three of them are randomly chosen and averaged to make up a percentage of my final grade.

Outside of classes and trying to get over my sickness, I've joined the LSE Think Tank Society. I'm a committee member with helping to organize a roundtables around US politics due to my background. It should be fairly interesting to work on for the entire year. This weekend, the first years are having a MPA BBQ which I'll be attending along with trying to get ahead in some of my reading. It's not a secret-grad school is hard!

Sorry for the quick update, but I'm off to the Public Sphere Journal meeting! It's a journal just for MPA students to contribute too!