John Hughes graduated from SIPA in May and spent the better part of this summer working in the Admissions Office to assist with projects and help fill in for a staff member on maternity leave.  John has contributed to the blog over the summer in his series “Summer Reflections” and this is his last post.  John will be working for the State Department in Washington, D.C. and we are sad to see him go, but happy that he will now start doing what he came to SIPA for.  This post was written on Friday, August 13th.

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I’m leaving New York this evening for my new life in Washington, so I thought it apt to write my final blog post on a few things that I’ll miss about SIPA and NYC:

Though New York can seem like a separate place from SIPA at times when you are busy with classes, homework and looking for jobs, I will miss the fact that there were always a million options of things to do when I wasn’t at school.  I’ll miss the fact that I can head downtown at any time and be surrounded by thousands of other people regardless of what I decide to do.  I’ll miss being able to choose any country in the world and hop on a subway to eat food from there.  I’ll miss being able to ride the subway 24 hours a day.  I’ll miss walking down a random street in Manhattan and inevitably stumbling upon a famous building or famous person.  I’ll even miss the craziness that is New York, all sights, sounds and jostling people.

I’ll miss being overloaded with extremely interesting new academic topics every day and having discussions with very smart people about those topics constantly (though I won’t miss the actual school work).  I’ll miss being surrounded by over 1,000 students all roughly my age and from over a hundred countries.  I’ll miss the built in social life that the situation brings:  In graduate school there are always people around to grab coffee or a drink with, or head to a show or to dinner.  I’ll also miss the SIPA parties, and the accompanying fact that I didn’t have to get up at 7 am each day like I will now.

Most of all I’ll miss the access:  While at SIPA you have access to speakers, events, brown bag lunches, happy hours, food nights, amazing professors and amazing classmates every day.  And that’s just at school.  You also have access to New York and all that it has to offer.  Of course, I’m very happy to be starting my new career in Washington and am certainly looking forward to receiving a regular paycheck again.  Without SIPA I would have never gotten the new job to begin with, and for that I am grateful.  I recommend the program to anybody who may be reading this, as you too will gain the access described above and will have a great two years.