Lessons from the past two years

Since I am trying to get back to the practice of reflection, I thought it was the right time to write down my lessons, notes, and random musings about my time at the Harvard Kennedy School getting my masters degree.

The MPA/ID is a strange degree, acronyms that don’t mean much to people apart from a certain set within the development community. I wasn’t particularly keen on the degree myself; it was notorious for being stingy with scholarships, the main deciding factor I cared about when it comes to graduate school. However, once I got two scholarships (a reality I still find hard to believe), I knew I was going.

Everyone who reminisces about the MPA/ID always says the people were the most special part, and they always turn out to be right. The program somehow manages to bring people together who get along despite language and cultural differences. There are a million theories in the room about how to make our world more just. You may leave the program believing nothing can be changed. But you will leave it knowing that there are kind, passionate, inspiring, hardworking people trying their best to move the needle.

As the youngest in my cohort, this experience was strange and something I’m left to do a lot of thinking about. I’ve gained many diverse perspectives on life and work, deepening my understanding of what truly matters to me, both professionally and personally. Each classmate has imparted valuable lessons on friendship, work-life balance, community building, allyship, and respectful disagreement. I can go on and on about everything these friendships have taught me and will continue to teach me but I will stop here. I will stick to what I do best — make a list of just a few lessons I want to remember from these two years. This is a work in progress and I hope to keep adding to this in the future.

Do serious work without being a serious person

Every single person in my cohort took their work seriously but the ones I admired the most were those who could always make jokes about themselves and help people laugh, even in difficult circumstances. Taking yourself and your pretty little charters/domains too seriously simply shows you are insecure in your skin. Celebrate your wins and more importantly celebrate the wins of the people around you.

“I was wrong and you were right”

Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. Cultivate that capacity for “negative capability.” We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on superficial impressions or the borrowed ideas of others, without investing the time and thought that cultivating true conviction necessitates. We then go around asserting these donned opinions and clinging to them as anchors to our own reality. It’s enormously disorienting to simply say, “I don’t know.” But it’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right — even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.

Always be humble

Going to a fancy graduate school doesn’t mean you have all the answers, it only means you can ask good questions. Listen to all the perspectives you can and be humble about the work you do and aware of your privilege.

Caring deeply is different from thinking carefully

Most of the people in my class were there because they care deeply about improving lives and addressing global challenges. This passion leads to commitment and perseverance in the face of complex, long-term problems. However, effective development work also requires careful, critical thinking to design sustainable solutions, evaluate impacts, and navigate cultural and political complexities. An over-reliance on passion without careful consideration can lead to well-intentioned but ineffective or even harmful interventions. Conversely, purely analytical approaches might miss important contextual factors or fail to build necessary community engagement. The most impactful work often comes from those who can identify what it is they care deeply about (their personal theory of change) and channel their ability to think carefully. From Borges as shared in DEV 101: “In this empire, the art of cartography was taken to such a peak of perfection that the map of a single province took up an entire city and the map of the empire, an entire province.”

Practice Bayesian updating

Bayesian inference techniques specify how one should update one’s beliefs upon observing data. At the core of Bayesian statistics is the idea that prior beliefs should be updated as new data is acquired. Apply this to life. Engage in monthly reflection, asking yourself, “I used to think… and now I think…” If you can’t articulate such changes, reassess your approach. Treat beliefs as hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded.

Listen listen and listen

It is important to keep practicing saying “I would like to understand better.” We’re so set in the conventional paths the world chalks out for us, and in most cases we pressure ourselves to take. Perhaps the pandemic disruption and jolt to normalcy played some role in this. I want to continue keeping my mind and heart open to the unexpected. Which is not to say that parts of me still aren’t scared, confused or uncertain — but I suppose that is what one is bound to expect when you open yourself up to a realm of new opportunities and possibilities. But through this uncertainty, I’m hoping to learn & unlearn, question what I think I know about the world, and listen. I think amidst the pressures to constantly exude and outdo specially in the first year; I lost sight of the need to listen.

History vs agency

We spoke about the idea of how much of a country’s story can be about its history and how much is its agency. I tend to think history is responsible (we never did talk much about colonization at the Kennedy School) I remember in a public infrastructure class which was about micro analysing African countries without historical context and diagnosing them in a grand total of 45 minutes when the professor asked why developing countries have weak institutions. I spent most of the class saying goodnight to my sister on Whatsapp and gossiping about her day. I looked up at this question to listen to the answers flitting from corruption to political instability. I raised my hand (a new) and said colonialism. A student from Nigeria who used to sit in front of me said “Exactly!!” And went on to eloquently expand. The professor said, “Okay moving on.”

Decisions and outcomes aren’t equal

There’s no such thing as a bad decision! It’s only the outcome. Always wise advice — simple but effective.

Institutions cannot be trusted, but we shouldn’t let that stop us

In my second year of the MPA/ID, student activists were evicted, hospitalized, doxxed, and further traumatized by the conditions created on campus. Many of them stand at the intersection of multiple identities and systems of oppression, and their traumas were further compounded by the academic, legal, and violent actions the university was taking against them. The lesson in immense courage and commitment of these student organizers, in the face of historical injustice and unfathomable loss of life and land shows that we need to keep fighting.

I want to end this fairly random note with a poem that I kept thinking of that I read in 2019, way before I even thought of going for graduate school. Ever since I decided to not stay back in the US and give up my OPT (gasp!) I have felt a lightness in my conscience. I want to continue to question, challenge, learn, read, observe and act. As the brave student speakers at graduation said “not being good would be a waste of attending this beautiful, complicated institution.” I hope I can practice above all, goodness.