First-year student bloggers: introducing Vishal

Today I’m happy to introduce blog readers to Vishal, another first-year MALD student whose Fletcher journey was catalyzed by a chance meeting in Italy. As a “Januarian” who matriculated in January 2021, Vishal is in the midst of his second Fletcher semester:

Some meetings morph themselves onto larger aspects of your life, rather beautifully.

My pivot to The Fletcher School was based on chance meetings with an alum in a sleepy town of Perugia, Italy in 2016. As a journalist for international news wire Agence France-Presse, I reported on India’s economic, social, and political aspects. But always felt the need to get a nuanced understanding of global political and diplomatic systems that engineered the world in numerous ways resulting in chaos, conflict and cooperation.

When I bumped into Fletcher alum Katerina Voutsina in Perugia, Italy in 2016, we were both working for the International Journalism Festival (IJF) running around the beautiful town reporting on various sessions. We bumped into each other at a party and the ensuing conversations on curriculum, professors, fields of study, the Fletcher Mafia (Fletcher alums who become your lifelong mentors, friends and support systems wherever you go in your professional life) made me research a lot more on this hallowed school in the U.S.

I spent four years preparing my application, getting sufficient international work experience and reaching out to other Fletcher alums. While I had other schools on my list, Fletcher, by far, felt like a natural fit as the flexibility, location, reputation, and the openness of the alums made an impact. I was constantly looking for ways to improve my skill sets, apply for fellowships, and grow within and outside AFP — based on the quality of reportage, analysis, and technical know-how. During this time, I worked as a fellow with Splice Newsroom (reporting virtually on their conference), Climate Tracker (mapping climate protests/fossil fuel usage in South Asia for The Diplomat, Global Voices, and AFP) and Civicus, a fellowship opportunity in Serbia that allowed me to interview the infamous Russian band Pussy Riot and multiple United Nations Rapporteurs.

In March 2020, I received the admissions response and I had been chosen to attend the school in fall 2020 for the MALD program. I was ecstatic and so was my family. It was the Indian auspicious festival of Holi (The Festival of colours) but India was already in a lockdown as the coronavirus pandemic began its ebb and flow.

As a journalist, I was reporting on the developments and within a few months, decided to push forward my program by a semester. The news was developing and the world was changing into a series of uncertain terrains — the locked and the unlocked, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. I wanted to stay with my family and report on the developments and return to Fletcher at a later stage. We were offered the flexibility to delay either by a semester or a year based on our current status — financial, social, and otherwise. This was a blessing in disguise for everyone.

While awaiting to start my spring 2021 journey, I worked a lot harder on the job, spent as much time keeping my family and friends safe and also worked on a project mapping misinformation campaigns in different Indian languages — specifically Kannada. The scale of political misinformation around the COVID-19 pandemic was humongous and we spent multiple months going back-and-forth with social media platforms including Facebook to understand the scale and intensity of these disinformation campaigns.

Cut to October 2021 and I am glad to be in my second semester already. Time surely flies. From the professional development program, choosing fields of study, to extracurricular activities (Fletcher has something for everyone). The range of societies, sports clubs, writing platforms, to annual conferences, there is a plethora of options to choose from to represent yourself at Fletcher.

With 13 internships, five fellowships, and decent work experience, I was skeptical of going back to school and starting a new journey from scratch. It takes gumption, resourcefulness, and a lot of hard work to transition back and forth but the Fletcher faculties, students, and admission teams have been a steadfast support system — inspiring, motivating, and also challenging students to do better — as academics, researchers, and potential change agents.

As a co-chair for the annual Decolonizing International Relations conference, I have received exposure to understand and critically analyze the need for creating spaces that radically alter academia, international relations, and create inclusive spaces. We are excited to get some of the biggest names as our speakers including Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd as our keynote.

And my Fletcher journey has just begun. I cannot wait to see what the other semesters have in store as the globe transitions into a post-pandemic world and we hit the campus running — one Covid test at a time.