The following post was contributed by second year SIPA student Richard Parker. Richard is working in our office this year and he, along with several other students, will be contributing posts throughout the year.
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I decided to take a break from paper writing and finals studying to update the blog. This month has been long and crazy! On the 12th the SIPA Pan African Network (SPAN) hosted their annual African Diplomatic Forum. The theme was: Climate Change as the new Security Threat- Implications for Africa. Our keynote speaker was Congressman Donald Payne and we had two panels with many notable and distinguished panelists. I served as the host for the event and also the coordinator for the Human Security panel. Needless to say I was beat after it was all said and done.
The next week I had a group presentation for my Peacekeeping in Africa class which drained the rest of the energy from my body. We presented on Liberia and to our surprise one of my professors colleagues who works for the UN (at the Liberia desk of course lol) was in the audience observing the presentation.
But after that was Thanksgiving!!!! I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Me and my mom did the normal turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce etc…which is always a treat…but the rest of the holiday well let’s just say it wasn’t a holiday. On Black Friday, while most people spend hours waiting on line to get in to department stores, I spent hours online in the library writing the first of 4 (four, cuarto, quarte, quattro) 20 (twenty, vingt, venti, veinte) page papers. Only this type of thing happens at SIPA. So in true David Letterman style I present the top 10 things that only happen at SIPA (in no particular order)
10: You meet someone from a country that you can barely find on a map
9: You hear languages that Rosetta Stone doesn’t have a disk for being spoken on the 6th floor café
8: You have professors who are real life rockstars at the United Nations
7: You complain about Lehman library but never manage to study elsewhere and get mad when undergrads take all the tables in group study
6: During finals time when studying with friends, someone says they’re about to make a food run and you know that means either Hamilton’s, Sub Conscious or Appletree
5: You have a 2 minute pitch
4: You cringe at the thought of producer theory
3: Riding in the elevator with Mayor Dinkins or a visiting ambassador or head of state seems normal
2: You know the best time to go to the café in order to avoid the line
1: You study with and learn from the worlds best and brightest
So maybe not as funny if you don’t go to SIPA but it was worth a try anyway. Back to paper writing…see those of you starting in the spring in a month!
Hosting the ADF conference
