study abroad

My younger sister is my only sibling. She is my baby, the one I named and the one with whom I shared a room for 11 years. Nobody knows me better than my sister and at her scarce 15 years of age, she advises me with more wisdom and confidence than any other person. We are so different. I admire her poise and maturity, her talent for every sport, her innate leadership abilities and her resistance to the chaotic sway of emotions. I lack all of these qualities. Our differences, however, have worked to make us perfect complements, perfect teammates. Indeed, we have shared much more than a room over the years. We have shared our parents, our clothes, our secrets, our opinions, our love, our laughter.

The fact that LSE professors (including former LSE director Sir Howard Davies) formally advised the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi and received thousands of pounds in research grants as compensation did not come as a big surprise to me.

Many academic institutions and individual scholars offer consulting services to governments around the world, sometimes even encouraged by their own governments. The controversy does not lie in these services per se, but rather in the disputed ethics of serving dictatorial and repressive regimes.

Hello everyone!

My name is Maria, and I am a Master’s student in International Relations at the London School of Economics (LSE). London is the fourth city that I can call a home. I was born in Havana, the capital of Cuba, and moved to the United States when I was 14 years old. My high school years were spent in the Sunshine State city of Miami before I headed to the much colder Cambridge for a wonderful college journey at Harvard University. Last May I graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor’s degree in History, not long before I would pack my bags once again to begin yet a new life in London.

It has already been six months since I arrived in the UK and my experience so far has been much more than academic. In fact, it would be fair to say that the highlights of my time in London have been surprisingly crafted outside of the classroom, when I was traveling, meeting people from the most diverse backgrounds, getting absorbed into the enrapturing chaos of London, and really understanding the words of the great British essayist Samuel Johnson: When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.