New blog series — Student Stories

Last spring I started thinking about an aspect of Fletcher that I never tried to cover consistently in the blog — the individual stories, and pathway through Fletcher, of our students.  In truth, the issue was always making time to do the research and writing — I’ve always found our students to be interesting, and I enjoy chatting with them.  Presenting them in an engaging and accurate way would take more than just a chat, though, and year-after-year, I felt it was a project that was better left undone than done poorly.  But this year, I’ve decided to take it on.  I asked a few students if they wanted to work with me, and two have agreed so far.  If time allows, I may add more.

So tomorrow, one of our first-year students, Mirza Ramic, will introduce himself by describing his long path to Fletcher.  Mirza and I met very briefly two years ago, when he came for an interview.  Then we were in email contact for a year or more.  And then we finally re-met in September.  The long history explains why I asked him to work with me in writing about a “typical” Fletcher experience.  (Typical in that Fletcher students take so many different paths to, through, and from Fletcher.)

I should note that I offered to do the writing, but Mirza chose to tell his own story.  I’ll be checking back with him throughout his two years in the MALD program.  Sometimes he’ll write and sometimes I will.  I hope blog readers will enjoy this new feature.