my new alma mater

After much deliberation, I've settled on the home town favorite, Indiana University, for grad school. I'll be getting a Masters in Public Affairs, concentrating in international affairs/african studies and economic development. I may try to do another degree after the MPA at IU or somewhere else (which won't be a big deal, since it's incredibly cheap for me at IU), or I might do peace corp, or maybe I'll just start working.....there's a novel idea. I want to work on humanitarian/development/crisis management issues in developing countries, probably in Africa. A lot of places there need a lot of help, and at least some places speak English. And so what if I don't speak any of the hundreds of native tribal languages. Neither does anyone else in the U.S., so it's not a great disadvantage. Latin American development would be a bit tougher to get into, cause my spanish is very bad, and a lot of folks in the U.S. speak it very well. I may very well decide that I don't want to spend my life travelling around to far-away places, in which case my MPA degree would give me enough flexibility to do different kinds of work (domestic government, non-profit management, fundraising, politics, etc).

Why am I writing a post about this? Because I've been obsessing about it for 5 months! And listing my reasons helps build my confidence that I'm making a good decision.