What IR means to me

IR, to me, is one of the different tools I use in my personal quest to get to know more about people who live in different places. It’s a bit simplistic, but I’ve always believed simple goals in life to be the best. I want to know more about people living in Pakistan, Lithuania, Spain, Chile, South Africa, Cuba, Crete, you name it. Whether I’m learning about Bassa archery in northern Nigeria from reading The Traditional Bowyer’s Bible or about Argentinean farmers burning fields in protest through the BBC or the role of the World Bank in helping to develop countries like Uganda and which school of IR thought that fits into through IR, the main point is that I’m learning about people and cultures that interest me. What IR has done is given me some help in looking below the surface of some events that I see in the news around the world and thinking about why they’re happening and how they’ll affect other things or places. I’ll be continuing with IR as a major so perhaps my view of it will change with time, but for now IR is a stepping stone to higher levels of learning about something I’m interested in. I hope the path will be interesting.

- John