Let me say it loud and clear — I'm an international affairs major, and I love it. Every day I'm excited about this major, because it's always new and always interesting to keep up with. Being an international affairs/relations/studies/global studies major is definitely a unique experience, and my people have definitely had some or all of these occur:
1. When someone asks you your major, it's not a simple answer — everyone who studies international relations also picks a region, theme and language to study, so your major's name isn't your full answer.
2. When everyone else is complaining about introductory-level language courses, you're not done until the Advanced level, if not further.
3. It's likely you started out as Political Science, History, or Economics, but found you liked the global angle a lot better.
4. The best textbook for the major is the news, and you have your favorite news sources on your phone with alerts for important world news and subscriptions to the ones you can't live without.
5. It frustrates you to no end when you see people on social media posting articles from irrefutable news sources.
6. You could be taking a political science, a history, an economics course and a language course, and it all counts for your major.
7. When you heard Iggy Azalea's "Fancy," you wanted to parody the song with "First things first, I'm a realist."
8. You know the well-kept secrets of "ending poverty," "development" and other buzzwords that are used in news articles and throughout general discussion of the world.
9. Reading hundreds of pages a week and keeping track of the various topics you need to understand and discuss comes naturally to you.
10. On the same level, writing three research papers about three drastically different world affairs comes pretty naturally too.
11. When people ask you what you're going to do with your major, it's actually easier to ask what you won't do with it because there's so many things to do with all the various knowledge and skills you've gained.
12. Going abroad is more of a requirement than a bonus within or soon after your college career.
13. What you find the most frightening about the elections is how little the candidates know about foreign policy.
14. Your dream job is likely with the United Nations or the State Department.
15. Peace Corps is likely in your backup plan somewhere, if not your immediate post-grad plan.
16. Politics of [insert region here] courses are your jam.
17. If you go to a school with a small IA/IR/IS/GS program, other people in the major are gems to meet.
18. Your friends come to you asking for help with their introductory social science electives because they've all been required for you to move forward in your major.
19. Whether you like them or not, you end up having to have some level of understanding in economics.
20. International relations theory follows you wherever you go in academia, and even if the professors don't want to talk about it, you end up coming back to realism, liberalism, constructivism, and dependency fairly often.
