After three years, I'm done with grad school! I finished my MSPH (Global Disease Epidemiology and Control focus) at Hopkins in late May, and my MPA (Economics and Public Policy focus) at Princeton in early June. It's been a lot of work: 10 months of internships, 3 comprehensive qualifying exams, and a Masters thesis; plus 4 quarters of Hopkins classwork and 3 semesters of Princeton classwork for a total of 33 graduate classes. I loved being in school again -- not all my classmates did -- but I'm also happy to have wrapped things up. One consequence of studying applied subjects like public health and public policy is that you're rarely delving into a subject just for kicks (at least for long); the goal is always to get out and do good work with the knowledge and skills you've acquired. This week I started a job I'm really excited about: working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)'s Applied Analytics Team. If you're curious about CHAI here's their about page, and this profile of Elizabeth McCarthy tells a bit more about the Applied Analytics Team (which she runs). We're also hiring. As with my previous internships and work, I won't be writing directly about what I'm doing much at all, but I'll still be writing more broadly about global health and development policy. (And this is probably a good time to reiterate that the views here are just my own.) I'll be working on projects throughout sub-Saharan Africa -- I'm headed to Nigeria for a couple months on Saturday! More on that soon.
Now, back to my (ir)regular blogging...