Konnichiwa and Happy New Year! 

For me, the new decade began on a train platform - Unintendedly of course. I console myself with the idea that this might be some special metaphor of how this year is going to take me on a great journey.. However, the last bit of 2019 was pretty alright before I got stuck in a train station, starting with a four course meal and live Jazz music and continuing on Shibuya crossing with a J-Pop concert. 2020 could not have started any differently than 2019. While one year ago, I was in a national park in Malawi dancing to the rhythm of the drums, surrounded by more animals than human beings and feeling the vulnerability of being human. Instead of African Jungle, 2020 began in a concrete jungle, in a City inhabited by 40 million people, a place more sheltered than any other - quite a contrast to Malawi. Unfortunately, I will only spend one month of 2020 in Japan as I will be leaving by the end of January. As my semester here will be over soon, I feel the urge to reflect on my academic experience here at the University of Tokyo, particularly on how my studies here have helped me find more of a direction in terms of where I’m heading in the academic world. 

For every Bachelor student, there will eventually come a point where the future will become unavoidable. In my last two years, I’d be planning out all the festivals I’ll be heading to in summer at this point in the year. However, in third year things change. All of a sudden, you cannot have a casual smalltalk conversation with your parents on the phone without them bugging you about master application deadlines and thesis topics. To sum up: Your career is no longer some abstract concept that feels so far away, like having children or getting married.. The only question that’s going through my head at the moment is: Can I keep up with the pace that life is going to be moving from now? 

An Insight into Security Studies 

One of the best parts of my experience here has been the chance of diving into a field that has already sparked my interest at UCG during second year: Security Studies. One of the courses I’ve taken here has been about regional Security organisations around the world, and so we studied security challenges and organizations in Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the Middle East. I myself did a research project about security in Africa, which I really enjoyed as I’ve been studying some of the conflicts in North Africa and West Africa in the past and thus, was able to expand on my knowledge. Our teacher is very involved research and has travelled to various places in Africa and Asia to study regionalism and peace and security architectures in these areas. What I liked most about her course was the fact that it was so applied. A lot of the time, courses in the International Relations are very heavy on theory, so sometimes it can just feel like you are losing touch with reality. At the end of the day, my greatest aspiration is to go into Journalism and having expertise in a particular field, such as conflict studies, can really help you find your niche in the field and differentiate yourself from others. 

Graduate Courses? No problem!  

After spending the last 5 months desperately trying to teach myself crash-courses in International Finance and Macroeconomics, I finally figured out that some of the courses I have been taking are accessible for graduate students and undergraduate students. Yet, I seemed to be the only undergrad student in the course and our professor taught the course with the mindset that all of us had already done an undergrad degree. The same thing happened with a Postcolonial Studies course. The great part about that, was that it gave me a great insight into other people’s Master degrees. 

Thesis Ideas!! To many of them…..

‘Write a Thesis, and make it unique’ they said. ‘No Problem, I mean no topic in Academia is ever overdone right?’. Every desperate bachelor student who doesn’t have the brains to do their own groundbreaking fancy statistics analysis and ,thus, has to recycle other people’s literature and come up with something smart to add on top of that, will feel like that. However, I do feel like the four months here at the University of Tokyo have equipped me with more knowledge to come up with some solid ideas for my thesis. Since We’ll be starting to write our thesis in February, we have to somewhat have an idea before that, what it shall be about. Thanks to the fact that during this semester, a lot of my courses have been a lot more applied, It was a lot easier for me to think of possible topics. Unfortunately, I’m now struggling to narrow it down. My Security Studies course inspired me to maybe write about how IMF structural adjustment problems in Sierra Leone have contributed to the civil war in the 1990’s. Another idea that could also allow me to draw on my passion for postcolonialism, was to compare independence struggles in SouthEast Asia and assess how, in some cases, they lead to stronger national unity and strong parties, and in other cases they lead to fractionalization and divide. Since I also studied China quite extensively during my time, I also thought of writing about Xi Xinping’s power consolidation and the future of the Chinese Economy. This is the life of a Liberal Arts Student. You can write your thesis about something related to politics, economy, and war - Or you just throw them all together! Another thing that really helped was that I was actually able to also speak to some of the professors here, as they have a lot of research experience also in some of the fields I am interested in and get some advice from them. 

Overall, I’ve gotten very lucky to be at the University of Tokyo as they have an entire Program for Liberal Arts and Sciences, and thus, the courses took an interdisciplinary angle the same way that UCG does too. Here, the courses are structured in a way that they will cover a bunch of different domains. For example, I took a course on law and the environment, which obviously included some environmental sciences combined with law. While this can lead to pretty funky discussions, it also makes it difficult to get really deep into one specific issue because not everybody has in depth knowledge about everything. That made me really appreciate UCG, since it offers both cross sectional courses and in-depth courses. 

Now I can count down the days until I’ll be on a plane bound for the Netherlands. Part of me is sad since I always struggle with Goodbyes. Even though I’d probably have to stay in Japan for decades to fully understand the culture, I’ve made the best of the five months I’ve had here. Being on exchange has taught me to let go and look after myself more instead of constantly being stressed about responsibilities. With the exchange comes an entirely new mindset which is defined by the fact that you are there for only a short amount of time, not just for academic purposes but also for life experience. My plan is to take with me the mindset of “It’s Sunday, what Museum do I visit today?” and live my last Semester in groningen with all my friends to the fullest. 

For now, that is it from me. Next time you’ll hear from me I will somewhere on a beach in the Philippines enjoying the perks of being a three and a half hour flight away from tropical islands. 

Best, 

Eva