Not in my name

To the London School of Economics and Political Science, health. You seem to have made an ill-judgement both of your friends and enemies; you will understand by reading the comments of your representative at the University and College Union, that you are at war with those who treasure the advancement of learning, and trust fools [...]

The melancholy of two thousand and seven

Now that this year’s other new year is done, I find myself feeling the full ominous weight of 2007’s significance and implications for my future. I am not sure when it started, but the current year is rather worryingly taking on a semi-mythical status in my mind. Several factors stand out to convince me that [...]

CDS essay: Going off-course

Going off-course
21st November, 2006
It is openly-admitted that the West has for many years attracted a large number of students from across the world to its top universities, and China is the biggest exporter of students in absolute numbers, accounting for 10% of all those studying abroad. However, the annual “Open Doors” report published this month [...]

Alma Mater

There is but one serious question that comes to us every time we make a clean break, and that is to ask: what happens when one disappears from memory? My presence effectively disappeared from this blog for months and I am sure I have already lost 99% of my readers for good. That is perfectly [...]

My sin, my soul.

I have finally managed to send off one internship application. This one needed a huge 1000-word sample article. And it is not even the one I really want to do. This is the Nico Colchester Fellowship prize offered jointly by the FT and The Economist, which (I think) lets one write about politics and/or Europe [...]

Growing Up

As I write this on the eve of starting my second to last term at Cambridge, I am wondering how much I have developed as a person during my time at university. I suppose I could rant about how nothing that is worth knowing in life can be taught and then drop clichés about separating [...]

The GRE

An A-level student would do better than me at the GRE would right now. Having spent the morning browsing their exam preparation software that incidentally mangles my display settings so the answers do not appear correctly, I have come to the conclusion that I will need to regress to the level of schooling achieved at [...]