“Winter” Down Under
About the author: Lise MacPhee ’19 is an FSI Global Policy Intern at the Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney, Australia. Lise is currently a Stanford undergraduate majoring in international relations.
Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that the last thing they would ever imagine me doing is coding. Yet here I am at the end of the work week, having spent the better part of it writing code to clean up data. Now, I don’t mean to imply that going abroad has “changed me” or anything like that… Sydney often reminds me of my California home — I am even living in a pretty hipster neighborhood where I get strange looks on my morning walk to the train for wearing my fancy business clothes. Australia is certainly not to blame for my sudden turn to programming, nor am I being forced against my will by my bosses at the Institute for Economics and Peace, the think tank where I am working this summer. Rather I have been incredibly lucky to end up in an internship where, (a) I am working with people who are entirely understanding of my difficulties and willing to help, and (b) the code I am writing has an immediately relevant purpose in my work that I have found both important and interesting. I guess this is how all those computer science majors feel all the time? I never thought I’d say it, but I’m starting to understand the appeal and important role of this stuff. Now, do not mistake this confession for me suddenly wanting to change my major or stick around Silicon Valley — I still want to throw my computer out the window around 17 times a day and am delighted when someone asks me to write a brief instead of clean up some data — but I’m thrilled by this opportunity to appreciate something I never thought I would, at an organization I am proud to be involved in.
The code I have been writing is helping me organize and quickly interpret data to find interesting patterns between different aspects of peace, economics, and other determinants, in Latin America specifically. It helps me make beautiful, effective and honest charts for briefs that will be read by government officials who have requested IEP consulting in order to improve their violence-reducing policies, for example. I became an international relations major with the intention of contributing to this kind of impact. I was never captivated by data, but here at IEP, I am recognizing and appreciating its importance towards my goals of increasing peace and the respect of human rights around the world. IEP is a pretty small organization with a broad reach, giving us (yes, even lowly intern me!) a fair amount of freedom to pursue what is interesting to pursue and what governments or organizations request that we pursue, instead of only following set procedures for the same things all the time. IEP’s indices such as the Global Peace Index, Positive Peace Index, and national peace indices are their major outputs, but there are many other parallel projects going on in the office as well. My coworkers, from all over the world, are always working on something exceedingly interesting, and I thoroughly appreciate the office’s constant collaboration or even just hearing about everyone’s work in our weekly team meetings.
It is supposedly “winter” here in Australia, and everyone keeps apologizing to me for the cold, but I cannot imagine a better place to spend this season. The beaches are still beautiful and warm, and even my morning commute across the bridge and alongside the opera house is lovely every day. I can’t say I always understand what my Australian roommate or coworkers say the first time, but I am starting to pick up some fun Aussie phrases. I visited a nearby wildlife park my first weekend to spend the day with all the silly Australian animals, from kangaroos to koalas to wallabies, but actually the best part was overhearing the single most Australian sentence ever uttered when a man exclaimed to his son, “That’s not a kangaroo, that’s a wallaby, mate!”
I’d joke that it was enough to make my time here complete already, that I can go home now, but I’m not actually ready and I can already tell that ten weeks will be far too short. Here’s to a beautiful “winter” turning into the programmer that no one ever thought I would be.
