No typical questions

While I wait to fly home from Washington, DC, I thought I’d reflect on the big Idealist fair last night.  Strangely, I’m not finding a common theme for the questions asked at this or any of the fairs I’ve done this fall.  Some years, I feel like I’ve answered the GRE question continuously for three hours.  Not so last night.  A few GRE questions, sure.  But lots of other topics.

(The answer, by the way, is that Fletcher does not use any arbitrary score cut-off.  And if you haven’t taken the exam yet, the answer is that you should score as high as you possibly can.  A target that I would give you isn’t rooted in your reality. Just prepare for the exam so that you can manage your time and nerves, and get the maximum score that you, given your knowledge, can get.)

Not surprisingly for DC, there were a number of questions about security studies.  But I also had a lot of nice conversations about the work that students in the environment field (and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy) are doing.  Again, no common theme.

I had two 2017 graduates helping out at the table — Cristina, who was a two-year friend of Admissions, and Adnan, who you all know through his posts for the blog.  Since I first met Adnan at a grad school fair, it was fun to include him in this one.

At one point, it didn’t look like the evening would go so smoothly.  My box of materials, which was supposed to be delivered by Friday, was instead delivered on Monday.  I had a firm Plan B for if it didn’t arrive (facilitated by Liz and Lucas, who packed up a bag of materials for me on Friday when I wasn’t at Fletcher), but it involved some running back and forth between the hotel and the exhibition center.  Not ideal.  The reward for our careful planning was that the box arrived at 2:00 and didn’t mess with my time at the fair at all.

With that, I’m heading to the airport and my flight back to Boston.