Back to the Blog

Well hello there,

It's been a while. If you followed my blog in the past you might wonder what ever came of me. Okay, that's probably an exaggeration since you're probably my friend if you're reading this so you have an idea. After some major ups and downs I've decided to return to my blog since I still have more to say.

If you were wondering what's happened over the last year or so here's the scoop. I finished writing my thesis in October. I didn't receive any revisions from my committee until mid-November, two weeks before my scheduled defense date, which was stressful but actually completely manageable. I made the revisions and defended my M.A. thesis on November 30th 2010.

Going in to the defense a lot of people told me not to worry. To sit back and relax because my committee was going to ask me easy questions. Well, I don't know what happened at their defense but I faced some pretty grueling questions from my committee including whether I though justice should come before peace or peace before justice, which is a major question within modern peace building. My answer was of course that question had no answer and that there needed to be a balance dependent on circumstances. I was write.

Prior to my defense I had prepared myself to have at least two days worth of revisions, as is standard after a defense. So you can imagine my surprise when I was called back in the room after the defense and told that there were none. My initial response was "so what do you want me to do?" "nothing." "nothing?" "nothing". It somehow seemed anti-climatic, but I enjoyed the rest of my time in Halifax immensely.

Back in Ottawa I had continued to work 3 days a week as a student at the Center for Mitigation Excellence at Public Safety. Unfortunately when I finished my degree my contract was not bridged in to a permanent position because of a hiring freeze. Being resourceful, I set my sights on Foreign Affairs and made some phone calls and landed a casual position with the Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program which was also supposed to become permanent if things went well. That job didn't start for three months after I finished with Public Safety so I spent my time fund raising for the Red Cross and Amnesty International through Public Outreach. These were interesting and cold times as a fund raised outside in the winter. Although I had a bit of a rough start I ended up liking fundraising enough that I still work with Public Outreach one day a week. I also started volunteering for two NDP MPs on Parliament Hill.

I have a lot to say both about Public Outreach and working with DFAIT. However, I am going to leave that for future blog posts. It's suffice to say that because of an internal HR error at DFAIT, that is completely unrelated to me, that I will not become permanent there either and I'm looking for another job!

Anyway this is just a little note to let you know that I'm back to blogging and that you'll be reading from me real soon!