Peace-Building, Job-Hunting, and Merry-Making

Last week I finished my last required NYU course in the professional certificate for Global Affairs program. For my final paper, I did a quantitative analysis of certain inputs (foreign aid, military troops, police, and civilian personnel) that go into peacekeeping missions to try and see if any set of inputs seemed to correlate positively with mission success compared with the others. It was a great experience and I got an interesting result as well. I am waiting for feedback now.

I have also gone into high gear with job hunting. I started getting some more callbacks and am doing some C++ tests for a couple of places - we'll see what I end up landing. I scheduled the Foreign Service Oral Assessment (FSOA) for August 25 - earliest possible date - and am in the process of filling out an online security clearance form. It is taking a while, since they want to know all the places I've lived in and visited in the past 10 years. There were a lot of weekend trips in Europe while I was living in London and it is hard to find all the dates.

Other than that I am continuing to enjoy the summer's wedding parties and bachelor bashes. In the past few weeks I designed my friend Cris' bachelor party shirt, attended his party in Boston (paint ball game in which I got a few welts on several body parts, and poker game in which I lost my $20 - but still a super fun night), and just this weekend I was up in Montreal with my wife for my friend Scott's wedding (rehearsal dinner, pictures, ceremony, reception, and Rock Band sessions). It was a great affair - emotion-laden, embarrassing, fun, exhausting, and climactic. Good food, and many good friends I don't see often. And now that that's over and the bride and groom are on their honeymoon, the same group of people are preparing to meet in a few weeks in the Thousand Islands region for another matrimonial round of merriment. Bring it on!