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A bit of a hiatus, but I’m still here!

By Noreen Bowden | October 7, 2011

I’ve been on hiatus for the past couple of months, owing to a rather dramatic change in circumstances. I’ve moved to Boston for a year to study at Harvard, where I’m working on a mid-career Master’s in Public Administration at the Kennedy School of Government.

I’m sorry to be missing all the excitement of this year in Ireland, what with the presidential election and all, but I’ll be back before long. In the meantime, my academic programme is a really wonderful experience – I’m studying alongside 200 other students from all over the world (something like 70 countries – including students from India, China, Japan, Egypt, the UK, Ethiopia, Croatia, Norway, Canada, Ivory Coast, Israel, Palestine, Nigeria, and lots more). Among our ranks are former (and future) government ministers, social entrepreneurs, soldiers, diplomats, technology consultants, journalists, college professors and many more interesting people of all sorts.

I was surprised to find that I seem to be the only one of the 1,000 students in the entire Kennedy School who has arrived from Ireland – though I have found two other Irish graduate students here at Harvard, both in the Graduate School of Education, one a teacher freshly arrived from Meath, the other a long-time resident of San Francisco.

While I’m here I’m studying things like economics, leadership, negotiations, advocacy, and policy change. So far, it feels like a wonderful gift, and I feel really lucky to be part of this class.

I’m still following all the events in Ireland, though I’ve been too busy to post of late. As I settle in I’ll be able to post a bit, although I’ll likely be quieter than usual on here until I graduate in May.

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