Thinking critically and laying the foundations for my future PhD study
I have had a great year in the MSc Global Economy programme, and it has been very rewarding. I participated in a total of six courses and gained great training in critical thinking as well as essay writing, which was relatively lacking before my participation in the masters programme.
What I remember most about critical thinking is that the first seminar, the professor asked a question about why drugs were banned. My classmate replied that because it was bad for health and addictive. The professor went on to ask then why sugar was not banned. Sugar is also unhealthy and addictive. This was the first time I began to learn to think critically, that there is no single answer to any question, and no question can be thought of in a single perspective.
Of the six courses I participated in, three were electives, so I was able to choose which courses I was interested in taking. MSc Global Economy is very much a cross-disciplinary programme and will involve content from a number of disciplines. The electives range from inequality, to business government relationship, to banking and finance. I was fortunate to be able to choose courses that interested me and study it in depth.
Before I started my masters programme, I had the idea of pursuing a PhD. However, initially, I was not entirely sure what I was interested in. In the Busssiness and Government Relationship course, there were weekly lectures and seminars on a particular topic, in which questions were discussed based on the reading material. Again, there are no standard answers to these questions. Students were encouraged to express their own views on the questions and to debate with their classmates who had different views. I found my research interest through this course. The topic of my masters thesis was developed from the seminar discussion in this course.
I was very lucky to have the opportunity to continue my PhD project in this area after the masters programme. My PhD research topic is also a further extension of my masters thesis, focusing on government merger control policy and business merger strategy in the political economy field, which developed from the cartel discussion in the Business and Government Relationship course.
MSc Global Economy brought me not only the opportunity to find my research interest, but also a lot of training in essay writing. With six courses and a total of 12 essays, I received a lot of training in critical thinking in a short period of time. From the beginning, when most of my essayss used descriptive language and restated other people's ideas, to the end, when I was able to effectively export my own arguments and adopt other people's ideas into effective supporting evidence. Without so much training in extensive English academic writing, my PhD research process would have been so much more difficult. I also received strong support from each of my teachers. I used to make an appointment with my teachers for an office hour when I was working on the outline or the first draft of my essays. I could always receive a lot of meaningful and valuable writing advice and a very supportive atmosphere in every discussion.
All in all, I am very grateful to the MSc Global Economy programme for providing a good foundation for my PhD research process. The exposure to a wide range of interdiscplinary fields of study clarified my research interests. I also formed a good bond with my current supervisor through office hour interactions. The extensive essay writing training was also very helpful for the subsequent PhD thesis writing, and I started to be able to express my own opinions and develop good writing habits.