Why did I postpone my Masters for a year to live in Africa?
The amazing opportunity to live outside of Canada and the practical experience
I am gaining in my field. I know it's not enough to say that I'm working at a
University in Malawi, so here is exactly what I'm up to.
My undergrad degree is in political science, but I
specialized in public administration and public policy, with a special interest
in policy analysis. This means that I live and breathe policies, programs and
development. My experience is in proposal development, evaluating policies and
programs and analysing policies and programs to provide recommendations and
plans. Due to my proposal knowledge, policy specialization and my experience
with the formulation side of web-based technologies, I have three main
positions within Mzuzu University.
My first position is lecturer with the department of Land
Management for the level 2 (second year) Development Policy class. Initially, I
was only supposed to teach the introduction to policy portion of the class -
which was basically me taking my 5 year degree and compressing it into a
simplified 4 hour version. Then, with the class's actual lecturer being
occupied, I was asked to teach the next week on Land Policy. In a casual
conversation, it seems that I have now gained the entire semester of teaching.
Fresh out of university, and I am a lecturer teaching development policy to a
second year class = amazing! Now when I apply to teaching assistant positions, I
can actually say I have experience. So far, I really like this part of my
internship. It's a lot of work reading up on policy areas enough to be able to
teach, but this is exactly what I love doing. Not sure how my students like me
- I'm giving them another assignment next week.
My second position is between the University Library and the
Information and Communication Technology department. Although this position is
a little slow to start, I am developing a program audit for the University's current internet server. This
is a program evaluation and analysis project that involves writing a report
illustrating the current state of the server and discussing the potential
future. Hopefully, if all goes as planned, this position will also involve
developing a funding proposal with CIDA to gain a positive future for the
university's online base. Currently, the web base of the university is not very
strong, to say the least, and is not allowing for a positive future in
development. I plan on making this different and providing the pathway for a
much more organized and strong future for the web portion of the university.
My third position is within the Children's library at the
university. This is a program evaluation and development position. I am looking
at every program and service the children's library provides or wants to
provide, and developing a program evaluation template to tell us how successful
the program is and the limitations and challenges that it faces. Once we
evaluate every program, we will move forward in tackling the challenges and
areas that make the program limited. This will involve writing funding and
donation proposals to organizations to gain resources, donations and
technologies.
To say the least, each position embodies a specific
application of my degree. Not only am I gaining actual experience, I am my own
boss and I'm living in Africa. I am amazed that I have this opportunity, even
if I have to remind myself every once in a while that this internship is a
privilege and a life experience. Now you know what I'm up to too:)
No comments:
Post a Comment