Name: Darice Xue
Class: 2015, Master’s in Public Policy 2016
Major: International Relations
Hometown: Chester, Virginia (or Richmond, whichever is more exciting)
Activities: Senior Research Assistant at AidData’s Tracking Underrreported Financial Flows project, Senior Research Fellow for the Project on International Peace and Security, Program Assistant for the Sharpe Community Scholars Program; member of Chinese Student Organization and Agape Christian Fellowship; hobbies – running & writing
Favorite Tradition at the College: Yule Log! Nothing like floating in mid-air because you’re sandwiched between two people getting into the Wren building.
Tell me about the Accelerated Masters Program that you are doing.
The College offers its current students from any major/background the opportunity to get their BA and their Master’s in Public Policy in five years. Admitted students spend the summer before their senior year in a dedicated research project with one of the William & Mary staff and then spend their senior year completing their undergraduate degree while starting their Master’s. The program provides services to help students find internships at a variety of public policy institutions, from think tanks to government agencies and more, and because of its small size can afford students a lot of attention. In the second year, students are required to take the “Policy Research Seminar” class where they gain real-life experiences by using their skills to support the operations of an outside policy-related organization. Classes condense more work into less time but are generally interesting; professors also encourage students to do research during the school year. If you’re interested in applying feel free to see more details about the application process here.
A lot of your work at the College has been centered on International Relations research, which sometimes gets a bad rap. What’s one thing you wish people knew about IR at William and Mary?
One thing that I wish people knew about IR in general is that you don’t have to study it to work as a spy, a diplomat, an NGO worker, or whatever it is that people tend to associate with the field. In fact, I would say that if you wanted to do those things it might be better to study something else – computer science for a spy perhaps, straight up history or cultural studies for the diplomat, and really anything for an NGO worker. That’s not to say IR isn’t useful for those jobs, but I want people to realize that those jobs aren’t as tied to the IR field in practice as it may seem. Rather, people who study IR really do just that – study IR. The things that are “sexy” in IR aren’t necessarily being a spy, but doing cool research and analytical work to find emerging challenges that a spy could face in a foreign country. Let me be the first to tell you that data entry in the Blow Hall basement (where AidData was when I first joined, many moons ago) was not sexy. But researching and producing donor aid reports to analyze project-level, disaggregated aid flows? Hot.
I know you speak 4(!) languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, and German. Are you working on learning any others?
Full disclosure: I used to do German but that was in high school. I was good, but at most I acquired Basic+ abilities (I’ll go take it off my LinkedIn at some point).
When I do have a moment, though, I like to dabble in everything. My number 1 side-language is Japanese – I acquired free materials at some point for Japanese levels 1-3, and I like to go through the examples. I know some of the language already by virtue of knowing Chinese characters, but the grammar is still pretty foreign. In addition to Japanese, I’ve played around with French (which I also have books for), learned some Korean (shout out to the College’s Hello W&M program), and picked up some Haitian Creole with a friend last winter.
If you could start one new tradition at the College, what would it be?
I kind of like this “circle of life” symbolism we have with convocation and commencement, and I’d like to complete the circle a little bit more. If there were a way to logistically do this, I would like members of the graduating senior class to each write one individual note or piece of advice to a member of the entering freshmen class. No one understands a W&M student better than a W&M student, and it’d be really cool to get something from someone who has made it here, even if you don’t know them.