So being an International Affairs major has its perks and pitfalls. I can pretty much study whatever I want: security, development, the Middle East, Turkish, Russian, Chinese, diplomacy, history, the US and every other government. I can study abroad three semesters with no problem. I can afford to take more art classes than an art major without stressing. I can learn from the best and the brightest professors that GWU has to offer.
But.
Being an International Affairs major also means that I’m one of those lucky kids who isn’t studying to become A THING. Premed goes to doctor, prelaw goes to lawyer, engineering goes to engineering—even art history kids have a specialization! Now I happen to have a specialization in an area of the world I’m not currently in, so I was curious to see what kind of internship, or stage, my study abroad program would find for the only Middle East Studies major. Actually curious isn’t the right word. The right word was naïve and optimistic.
So they got me an internship at Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders. Sounds nice, right? Well what sounds cool about MSF to me is the international component but without actually being a doctor, and without actually being in a developing or underdeveloped country, what’s left…but paperwork.
I have never seen an office so cluttered with papers. It is a truly an archaic system of documentation. The pink sheets get stapled to the white sheets, the blue sheets go into les commandes, or the packages that are sent overseas with doctors, the yellow sheets go into one of nearly a thousand big, ugly red or blue binders. After half an hour in that place I feel that I’m going colorblind and more than that I feel like I’m trapped in a prison made of paper.
The people that work there are nice and don’t seem to mind papercuts, those irey splinters, but most are volunteers. The few salaried employees started as doctors in the field and have been there for no less than ten to fifteen years. These are the ones that sit there patiently and watch as I staple the yellow sheets to the pink sheets and staple the blue sheets to my forehead. So in this one case International Affairs/Middle East Studies major goest to librarian, and I’m the sucker who signed up for it.