Personal Contributions

My critical thinking knowledge education at Jepson, summarized for me as the skill of being analytically skeptical towards what I read, has greatly aided the quality of my projects at Wilson. This skill, I have come to realize, stands at the core of diplomacy in foreign affairs. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of various checkpoints and areas of the country, and the seemingly worsening Pakistan-Afghanistan diplomatic relations over the course of the summer have made me redirect my Pakistani news tracking responsibility to include Afghanistan-based news. Although I have the flexibility for news tracking to the extent of choosing my own news sources, implicit bias riddled, or politically manipulated news with rising immigration policy tensions across the Pak-Afghan border have inflated my sense of responsibility to provide the most well-rounded news analysis to my department as possible. To me, doing so was the best way of ensuring my final product was impartial and free of my own implicit leadership theories (ILTs), thereby doing justice to the varied perspectives of reports coming in from two ethnically linked yet distinct countries undergoing severe political turmoil.

On another note, I have been heavily engaged in research on India’s energy for the purpose of a book. To provide the most comprehensive list of information possible on international energy security engagements and agreements over the last few years, I have been sifting reports covering India’s energy with countries across the world. I have also been extracting data and information on eg. Exports and imports of fuels, creating graphs to depict change over time. This has been an important element of the overall project’s quality, as an analysis of the state of India’s energy security today is moot without reference to the last few years in light of constantly changing policies to confront climate change. Yet, the simultaneously “historical” and “modern-day” elements of my project remind me of my class with Dr. Wilkins last year, where I wrote an essay on a recent Supreme Court ruling after struggling considerably with a lack of recent resources while having an abundance of outdated sources at my disposal. One important thing the rigorous course taught me how to apply outside the classroom was how to be confident about my findings in an under-surveilled research space. While all credit goes to Dr. Wilson for equipping me with the skills necessary to do so, his course training has helped me find research within articles (that authors may have overlooked) to present to my superiors at Wilson. Overall, then, my personal internship contributions’ actions and efforts have been heavily rooted in much of my Jepson education.