Introducing Prianka: From international trade to the LLM program

We’ve already met two of our new Student Stories writers, Kaitlyn and Gary, and today Prianka introduces herself.  She is the first regular Admissions Blogger in the LLM program!

Hello!  Namaste!  Sawadika!  Salaam alaikum!  Bonjour!  Konnichiwa!  Ni Hao!  Hola!  Guten tag!  Ola!  Merhaba!  Shalom!

A peek into the Fletcher world – a melting pot of cultures, languages, and much more!  From me personally:  Namaskara, vanakkam, or namaste!

Prianka, second from right, with Fletcher friends at a Red Sox baseball game.

To introduce myself, I am from India and I’m enrolled in the Master’s in Law program at Fletcher.  A question that I have found difficult to answer since coming to Fletcher is exactly where in India I am from.  I was brought up in Bangalore, spent five years in law school in Jodhpur, and after that a little more than four years working in Delhi.  While Bangalore is always home, Delhi is my home away from home.

One of the goals that I set for myself at Fletcher was to challenge myself and to sign up for new experiences.  Contributing to the Admissions Blog would be one of the new experiences that I am quite excited about.

Before Fletcher, I worked in the field of international trade at Ernst & Young and thereafter a law firm, Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan.  As a lawyer working in the international trade team in both organizations, I worked primarily on trade remedy investigations.  I was advising companies across the globe and the government of India on trade remedy matters.  International trade was an area that interested me in law school and I gradually developed an affinity for it during my professional career.  A couple of years into my work, I realized that getting a holistic understanding of this area of law was important for me, in order to fill the gaps in the experience that I had gained working in the field.

That need led me to apply to the LLM program at Fletcher.  The run-up to deciding whether or not I was ready to take the plunge of going back to school was quite daunting.  Was I ready to take a break for a year professionally, not have a paycheck come in at the end of the month, and make my first journey towards the west?  Two months into my Fletcher journey and I’ve had no reasons to doubt my decision.

The courses have definitely been challenging on many levels and I realize that they have exposed me to areas and aspects that I never considered would be part of my journey.  An interesting facet of the Fletcher program is that, though I’m in the LLM program, all my classes are with students from the other programs as well.  So even when I’m in a law course, my peers are not necessarily lawyers, but rather, come from diverse backgrounds.  Naturally, therefore, discussions haven’t focused only on the letter of the law, but also the other aspects that influence the law, such as politics, economics, and social context.  That being said, every now and then I do find myself pining to argue about the difference between a “may” and “shall” or between a “probable,” “possible,” or “plausible” in a legal provision!

Over the next few blog entries, I hope to be able to give someone looking to understand Fletcher a bird’s eye view into the LLM program through my journey.  However, I believe that a disclaimer would be important — as with any journey, there are many paths to the destination, and my path is just one of the routes!

If the last two months were anything to go by, I’m certain that the rest of the year at Fletcher is going to be intellectually stimulating.  As a person who has a fondness for lists, I hope to cross off all my academic goals by the end of this journey.  On a more personal note, I have a bucket list of sorts that I consider as important.  It varies from buying a lottery ticket that the Boston billboards depict as having a high probability of success (and something that’s banned in most Indian states); to building a snowman, since this is going to be the first time that I’ll be in sub-freezing temperatures; to going to a baseball game and knowing more than “1, 2, 3 strikes, you’re out.”  I have been told it’s a peculiar list, but for me it seems quite normal, considering I’m an international student.

I look forward to sharing, and to reporting on my endeavors in making headway on my bucket list!

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