Welcome!

I gained much knowledge, insight and laughter from reading some great blogs. From Bill Easterly at aidwatchers.com to the sometimes hilarious and sometimes deeply moving talesfromthehood.com and I wonder how they started. Should I wait till I feel knowledgable about important issues to start blogging? Will I ever be? Or should I start now, at the start of my personal journey, and hope that if ever people start caring about my opinions, I will be more practiced writer?

Despite a fear of this blog becoming a chronicle of failure, I will start now, when I call myself a student of development - although even that might be generous.

I graduated a Science degree, Maths and Physics, but completely left my comfort zone of numbers and equation to spend a year working with an NGO in Brussels and Africa. I had spoken to people who had done similar things, they mentioned that volunteer experience had 'changed' them, but I think I failed to understand what that really meant. I heard but I didn't listen.

Africa changed me. My comfortable middle class life seemed dull upon return. How could the quiet grey urban streets compare to the vibrant loud and bustling street markets of Kampala? How could my friend's worries about the lastest fashions, which of the 3 pleasant graduate schools to go to or whether that cute guy likes them not seem petty after spending a year working with ministers to push human rights bills, or talking to victims of war crimes? How could pasta and potato be satisfying after so many simple yet exotic feasts? I spent a few months 'adjusting' back to student life, all the while feeling like I was trying to shake off the greyscale glasses that had dulled life. But I could not forget the people I was working with, or the causes they were championing.

Thus instead, I have diverted my post-graduate study to the field of development economics, and have developed a thirst for information that has resulting in a flurry of buying books and reading aid blogs. I want a career in development, but I want to do it right. I want to get an education and know where I can be useful.

This blog will be a documentation of my journey from eager student to probably a cynical disillusioned cat-lady. I'll post book reviews, links to people whose thoughts I agree with but express themselves infinitely better than me, and occasionally thoughts and observations about my life.

So Welcome to TimeGiven! I hope you enjoy reading much more than I enjoy writing!

TG.