Angelica P Intro

Hi, I'm Angelica Paquette. I'm from Rhode Island and I'm an International Relations major in CAS. I'm planning to study abroad in Madrid next year. I just visited the UN in NYC and I was really interested when we read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I took my first course for my International Relations major the second semester of my freshman year. The course was International Politics and the professor teaching the class also wrote the book. I had chosen to take the class without any prior knowledge about the subject and was surprised to find out that International Politics was focused on theory instead of history. I was expecting to learn about how leaders of countries negotiated treaties, encouraged diplomacy and flawlessly executed decisions. I had this ideal image of a perfect world system. Throughout the course I realized how unstable and impossible it is to have a perfect international government. I hadn't realized that the United Nations has only existed for less than a century. In addition, whatever global doctrines that have been established by the UN are mostly suggestive instead of enforced. All the political insurgencies that have been arising have made me realized how imperfect and underdeveloped the international system is. Now whenever I hear that the UN is holding a conference, I wonder how effective their resolutions will be and whether or not the international organization is as powerful as I once thought it was. It's disconcerting now to know how unstable international affairs can be.