Master's of IR Half-Done

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these things. But I’ll try my best to be quick with an update. This post will be about me and my school situation.

Last semester went well, classes were interesting and not that disruptive to my thesis writing. The class on Diplomacy was very enlightening. At the end of the semester I had planned on submitting a fair chunk of my final thesis. We were required to hand in about 40-50% of the final paper and, from talking with some others, I gather that they handed in only about 30-40%. I think this is typical as most took too many classes in the second semester. I on the other hand worked crazy hard in the last month and handed in a great deal more; I also only took minimal classes. The result is that I actually finished my thesis. That's right FINISHED IT! I was working on it until the final hour before it was due. Everything just fell into place in the last month. It’s full of typos and needs some polishing up but, for a two-year program, I finished most of what was required in a year. This year will be smooth sailing asI it will only need minimal work before its final submission.  On top of that my seminar professor was very impressed with it and gave me the coveted A+. For my first thesis I’m shocked.

If anyone is interested to know the details about it, I posted the abstract on April 18^th. More or less it’s about how large the European Union can grow based on its previous patterns and current orientation.

I pushed myself to finish my work this year, rather than dragging it out, because I was planning on being accepted to the dual masters course that I previously wrote about. Well it turns out that I got into the program at Lancaster University and I’ll be starting from scratch in October. For this program I have to write another thesis and I didn’t want two significant papers sitting on my neck at the end of next year.After all that waiting I finally got in. Not sure if I could have made it if I applied directly. I'm thankful to Ritsumeikan University for that chance.

I’ve been thinking about what my next thesis will be about since I finished the topic that I was previously working on. I’ve evaluated how far the EU can go now, as it has grown to a significant size, I think the main topic should be its foreign policy towards Russia. Power politics between the EU and Russia is very interesting to me. As I have a Russian background it may be helpful for me to know more about that region of the world. 

With that being said and school being finished in Japan, I’m now in Lancaster, UK, waiting for my next program to start. Visa in hand and house confirmed. October 7^th will be a new start for me in the UK.