My 17-day long internship

The internship is drawing to an end. In another few hours time, I will be evicted from the building and all that’s left of this internship would be memories and perhaps a few photos. Although it has only  been 17 days, this is nothing short of a life-changing experience. For one, I would not be coming back to this place in spite of the fact that I always thought I would. Also, I finally admit that what we study in NUS is sometimes sorely deficient. All the political science frameworks of real world politics, is nothing but abstraction. The truth is out there in the real world, not in the ivory towers of professors. And the truth is nuanced and multi-layered, riddled with complexities.

Last night’s conversation with someone who can easily claim that he has been there, done that was also quite interesting. It offered an insight to the world that I know so little about and it created a thirst, a thirst to find out what really goes on. His absurd propositions make me laugh but yet, I cannot help but wonder whether there’s something more in what he was trying to say. Did he mean what he said? It is no wonder the Jews failed to see their Messiah, at times, it is really hard to tell a genius from a fool.

Right now, there is nothing I can do except to plug my knowledge gap on what he has spoken about. This is the second time food politics comes up, and seeing how it is closely aligned the kind of humanitarian work that I have always yearned to do, this might be something that is worth looking into a bit more. 

Finally, what made me most proud in this internship was how I managed to force myself to do 3 weeks of readings on trade & politics – something which I always wanted to but was just too much of a sloth to do. The paper on East Asian Economic Integration was a nice finish to what I did last semester on Asian Financial Crisis, gives me an overview of how East Asian economic ties developed in the last decade. The politics of Doha Round was a real eye-opener, I never quite look at the world in the same way after that.

All in all, although it cost three weeks of school, it was three weeks well-spent.