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Introduction

We are pleased to present a collection of reflections by the alumni of the Program in International Relations at the Unviersity of Pennsylvania. We asked our alumni to write about how their careers have developed since their graduation and how the study of IR has mattered in their professional lives. IR is a broad and diverse field, and sometimes students feel lost in all the possibilities. So our primary objective was to provide our students with examples---stories of how careers are developed and made. We were also curious to find out what our alumni have been up to.

We were amazed and inspired by the ways in which our alumni have taken their training and applied it to diverse careers. In an age where there is increasing emphasis on "pre-professional" education, the stories told by our alumni remind us that skills and knowledge gained from a strong interdisciplinary liberal arts education still matters.

In the IR Program, we take the "discipline" in "interdisciplinary" seriously---that is, in addition to learning the subject matter of international relations, we expect our students to master the "approach to knowledge" embodied in the various social scientific disciplines. At the risk of oversimiplifaction, we expect our students to be able to theorize like political scientists, model like economists and evaluate evidence with the critical and discerning eye of a historian. We also train our students to write well and communicate their ideas clearly. Solving problems through theory based, hypothesis driven, empirical analysis, and communicating the findings is what most professionals do, and that is precisely what we strive to teach. So (at the risk of sounding a bit self-congratulatory), while we are amazed and inspired by what our alumni have gone on to do, we are not surprised by their successes.

We were also gratified to find that long after IR ceased to be a formal subject of study, many of our alumni remained interested and actively engaged in international affairs.

To our current (and prospective) students: We often say that you can do anything with a degree in IR. But that sense of near infinite possibility is sometimes a confounding burden (especially around the fall of your senior year). We hope that these reflections by our alumni will give you inspiration and a few ideas about how to turn your aspirations into a real career. We hope, too, that a few years down the road as you are forging your own careers you will choose to share your stories with us for the benefit of future IR majors.

To our alumni: Thank you for your willingness to share your experiences with us. We hope that reading about the career trajectories of fellow alumni will provide you with inspiration and pleasure. We ask you to keep in touch, to update your story with us when there is a major change, or submit reflections if you have not yet done so. This is an on-going project that we will continue to update and maintain in the future. Finally, congratulations for all that you have accomplished.