Read other internship diaries:
Interning at CNN Fareed Zakaria GPS 🌎
Interning at Northern Light Venture Capital in China 💸

TODAY MY CSF INTERNSHIP HAS ENDED.

Yay! Celebrating a fruitful twelve weeks. 🌟

Feels like a good time to stocktake (without revealing anything confidential, cough): I’ve emerged with a lot more knowledge about many diverse fields and cool ideas (from mirrorworlds and metaverses to international norms-building to blockchain decentralisation); I had the chance to help out with a motley of ongoing foresight and cross-cutting policy projects (including the National Scenarios 2040 driving forces); and since interns could autonomously drive their own emerging strategic issues, I took the opportunity to develop, discuss and present on some ideas I have been thinking a lot about since 2019/20 (i.e. what the future of social media networks looks like, post-FB/Twitter/TikTok, etc. and what new communities and relationships would form with the evolution of immersive technologies like live-streaming, AR/VR).

Internships are sometimes like apprenticeships (teaching you the know-how you need on the job); other times, they are like a condensed excerpt of adult life (and the capitalist grind) that you get a sneak preview of while you are still in the ivory tower of university bliss; this time round, it felt like a hybrid, interdisciplinary experience of many things: futurist, think-tank, government policy-planning. In a way it was like a crash-course seminar on governance, strategy and futures thinking with lots of readings, reports, papers, slide decks, etc.—albeit with higher stakes and in the context of informing policy-making. I loved it. Parts of it actually echoed college life haha (especially the paper-writing and the discussions) while requiring a mindset shift towards strategic priorities, anticipation and challenges. At the same time, the experience was also like being in a think-tank, due to the buzzy, dynamic flow of ideas that was constantly surging (virtually); except that CSF is more than a think-tank by virtue of it being situated within the PMO Strategy Group—I liked how the impact of each piece of foresight work could be felt due to the centre-of-government perspective and communications with various ministries.

At the end of the day, I’m immensely thankful to have encountered so many exciting minds and ideas!!!

In other news…

1. The ACADEMIC tab of the blog has been belatedly updated with my Junior year papers 📘 I’ve also added my A-level Knowledge & Inquiry Independent Study written in 2016 JC2 (what a throwback… I found it after going through my old email inbox, which is a total time machine and treasure trove of embarrassingly hilarious exchanges composed in internet slang e.g. bffs 2gether 4eva, from back when I was thirteen): Decolonising The Past: Can historical fiction contest the knowledge constructed in colonial historiography?

2. April shall be my editing marathon month!!! Will be going off the grid and very MIA on the internet to give my manuscript all the attention and love that it needs. 💓

3. Harvard has announced that it’s planning to resume in-person classes and return to a full-capacity campus in the fall. Fingers crossed!!! Hopefully, those who have gapped can still get good housing. 🙏

Lots of love and have a blessed Good Friday,
Sel