I took a couple of graduate student seminars and the professors teaching those seminars liked my work and helped me to get into the master’s program at San Diego State University. It's not every day that you get a chance to change your career, and I was determined to make the most of it. After I finished my master’s degree in history, I applied and got into a program for a doctorate degree which is a degree that lets you research and teach other university students, if you’re lucky enough! The subject that I’m researching is Croatia and Yugoslavia’s economy in the mid to late 20th century. Basically, I’m looking at how people’s economic well-being (how good their job pays, how long they’ve been unemployed, how much more or less their neighbors make) translates into social stability. Social stability is just a fancy way of saying overall happiness or unhappiness with the way things are which can sometimes lead to protests or even violence if things get bad enough. I hope that my research can be used to inform other people who might be able to enact policies to help prevent the kind of unhappiness and insecurity which can lead to violence.
I’ve been in Zagreb for a few months now, and I often walk to the national archives which is where the data that I need for my research is stored. Whenever I walk instead of taking the bus, I get a nice view of the river Sava which flows right through Zagreb and separates the old part of town from the new part. If you look at the picture of the river, you’ll see that it was taken right after two weeks of heavy rains, the river has almost overflowed its protective barrier! Normally the trees underwater near the middle of the picture are where the riverbank is.
