Third year in St Andrews

After a relatively long winter holiday, my second semester of my third year in St Andrews started late in January. This semester, I continue with Politics of Africa in International Relations and in Arabic; I still have Media Arabic and I started a new module called Classical Arabic which focuses on old Arabic texts including for example Quran. Politics of Africa promises to be an interesting module too, for it concentrates on my favourite region of Sub-saharan Africa.

Winter holidays and the start of second semester usually augur the internship period, and this time was no different. I started looking for ways of how to spend my summer early in January, investigating options mainly in the non-profit sector. This is a tough field though since most of the non-profit internship are unpaid, and obtaining any reasonable funding is often more difficult than getting the internship itself. I have not yet heard from many places I applied to, but I am hoping I will be successful.

Besides intensive studying, I have also plans to keep further developing my sushi business from last semester. The plans are to increase our online presence, and bring in more revenues expanding our product portfolio and increasing overall efficiency.

With my fourth year and, more importantly, graduation coming slowly but surely, I am also starting to look into my options after I leave St Andrews. At the moment, I am inclined towards continuing my studies and pursuing a Master degree in a field similar to International Relations. Although I am more attracted to the USA, given the very high costs of postgraduate education in the USA, I am forced to consider some cheaper European alternatives. From what I have researched so far, LSE, SciencePo in Paris and the Graduate Institute Geneva emerge as very promising candidates.