International Relations Student

I was an International relations college student. I am glad, after the suffering, the sweats, perhaps including bloods and tears, I can get a B.A in IR Major, even though I am so much happy, but sometimes I really miss my times as IR Student.

before I tell you what is the essential life of being an IR student, I am gonna give you some explanation about IR,

"International relations is generally refers to the specific university degrees and courses which are concerned with the study of the major political, economic, social, and cultural issues that dominate international agenda"

in my campus, political and economic is the main issue of IR programme. my favourite subject when I was a college student was international relations in Europe, as an Asian I think European union is the most successful organisation that ever made.

Even, ASEAN (I am an Indonesian so yeah, we have ASEAN) is great but not really great as EU. I don't want to make my country or my region looks bad, I am just telling you guys the truth. Okay, so maybe we can continue to the essential part directly, which is the "Life as Student of International Relations", there are some parts that makes me really love,hate, and miss being a college student of IR :

1. We are not only learning about political, and economic, even though the main issue is those subjects. But we also learn law, religion, civic, including language. I took Mandarin and Arabic when I was in college, I think Mandarin and Arabic are the great languages too. Especially the part when I learnt Mandarin, as a Chinese descendant, I felt like yeah, finally I know some of phrase in Mandarin, so when I go to China again I won't feel so ashamed, because I have chinese blood but I can not speak mandarin, feel like I betray my ancestors XD (I am serious).

2. Papers and Essay are our food everyday, and the professors asked us to collect in only one day in 2000 words. Maybe to look for the issue for paper is not really hard, because every day in this world everything happens including war, climate change, feminism, etc. the hard part to make paper is too many issue too little brain (lol) I mean, c'mon even, making abstract for essay is kinda hard. we have to find the perfect words to be a perfect phrase with only a day deadline.

3. I hate when the Professors always ask us to speak up harder. they think we as an IR student should speak up and be a critical person. I won't blame it because we have to but, the part that I hate most they think that we the "silence students" are not capable as much as the students who like to speak up. I know what you're talking about, I open my brain like I open 37 tabs on Chrome. I just don't like to speak, unless for the subject or issue that I'm interested with.

4. We have to read our books in different language, I mean in here most of school in Indonesia use Bahasa as the main language for communication. we use English as the second but occasionally. So, most of my friends including me sometimes need to re-read our books to make sure, we understand what we're reading.

5. When I hang out with my girls, when the other gang do some gossiping or talking the latest fashion trend, we talk about the latest nuclear issue, or trade deal, or when US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Yeah, that's the hottest gossip for us as the student of IR.

6. Most of us become a Realist. When I was senior high school I believed with the "perpetual peace" and so idealistic, but when I started my study in IR, I knew that there's no "perpetual peace" only interests that make us get closed with another (it's not about you Gals, if you read it XD). That there's no immortal enemy or immortal allies, there's only immortal interests. and that is the reality nowadays in our world.

7. As a student of IR, we usually do some campaign about the latest issue, such as cancer campaign, environmental issue campaign, save the forests campaign, and the favourite of mine is the gender campaign.

8. The most that I love and learn from being a student of IR, we are taught how to do diplomacy. when I was in college, I took Diplomacy practice class and it was so amazing. as a student of IR, MUN (Model United Nations) is a common sentence for us. in the Diplomacy practice class, I was taught about MUN either and I took the long diplomatic programme too. a little explanation for MUN, MUN which is model united nations is part of the programmes in IR major in everywhere. in this MUN we are taught to do diplomacy, and be a delegate for a country. I was taking part as a UK, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, and Turkey delegation, usually what we discuss is about the latest issue. as an example when I took long diplomatic programme on 2016, we were talking about migration issue, in my diplomacy practice class about Human Rights, and the latest MUN that I followed in 2018 is about Somalia War.

9. The last but not least, we got a stereotype, this point is related with number 4, which is because we communicate using Bahasa, as a IR student we got stereotype as Miss or Mr. English that we can speak and know English so much and the truth not all of my friends can speak or understand English very well, they still use translator devices. but I love with this stereotype because I am an Anglophile, I love England so much and I love every little thing about England.

So yeah, I think those points are the essential explanations from my life as an International Relations College Student. Hope you enjoy and like it, and see you in my next post xx-TN

#hubunganinternasional #hi #mahasiswa #politik #internationalrelations #realist #liberalist #constructivist #feminist #collegestudent #college