I'm Climbing Up Those Walls Again

How can you refuse the Broken Social Scene after a video like this?

Ok, here's the lowdown on school and work:

A few weeks ago, I took the three toughest exams ever,

Monday: Economic Theory for Development
Tuesday: Development Economics
Wednesday: Quantitative Methods for Development

According to Oxford tradition, we have to wear sub fusc (the black and white getups we are wearing in the pictures in the previous post) and take each three-hour exam in the Examination School, a large building downtown. The examiners are very strict, and the whole process is fairly uncomfortable and adds to the stress. If things weren't bad enough, I left the first exam convinced I had failed (if you fail any of the exams or your thesis, you have to resit everything the following year).

Well it turns out I was completely wrong. Not only did I pass each exam and the essay, but I got a distinction! The Oxford grading system is rather strange, but basically:

<60 ---> fail
>= 60 & < 70 ---> pass
>= 70 ---> distinction

Where you get an overall distinction if your average score (on the three exams and the thesis) is over 70. Out of a class of around 29 students, 6 got distinctions, it's kind of like an A++++. My exam scores were good but not distinction level (68, 66, and 69), but it was my thesis score which pulled up my average (a 76, which is a really really really high mark!).

Just in case you feel like putting yourself to sleep my thesis (10,000 words or less) was on how parents allocate nutrition based on birth order in rural Ethiopia:

Lining up to eat: Birth order and nutritional status in rural Ethiopia

Because of my performance, it was mentioned that, if I wanted to come back to do a D.Phil (PhD) with the department, there would be a place for me. However, the immediate future will be spent doing something quite different:

While we were all nervously waiting for exam results, my friends and I all got calls from the Overseas Development Institute regarding our overseas placements. It turns out that I'll be working in the Budget Division of the Ministry of Finance of Malawi (see the map above for location). My job will be Desk Officer, and the job description covers pretty much anything you could imagine someone working on a budget would do, drafting reports, advising on the priority of spending both internally and externally (with other ministries), helping prepare next years budget as the political (and donor situation) changes, etc etc etc. It's quite different that anything I've ever done, but challenging in a good way and I'm very much looking forward to tackling it.

I couldn't have picked a better country to be sent to than Malawi. From what I've read it's a beautiful country full of very friendly, if desperately poor people. I'll be working in the capital Lilongwe, where I just recently learned I'll have a house with a garden! This of course means everyone is invited to visit me over my two year stint there, there will be plenty of room. If you're curious, google the country (and read beyond the CIA World Fact book)!

I can't begin to express how excited and happy I am. I can't wait to get out there (Mid-september) but until now it's a summer of relaxing, watching the rest of the World Cup and preparing for the journey. I'll be coming back to the US for the month of August, so I'll try and drive around and see as many people as I can (or maybe I should throw a PARTEEEE)

the start


the finish


everything in between