HELLO! I’M ROXY DU

LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS & POLITICAL SCIENCE

London was calling.

LSE showed me what critical thinking is, armed me with a deepened sense of interdisciplinary studies, and surrounded me with a wealth of fun peers from different worlds and fields.

​

I'm grateful for the time I spent in the UK, which was probably also a golden period as I was in my early 20s and full of wishful thinking - no matter how gloomy and cold a rainy winter day could actually be, all I could see and remember is the silver lining around the dramatic clouds that are rarely seen anywhere else in the world, as well as the dim street light next to a typical British red public phone box in the alley across the street, leading to all the sounds and fury in Covent Garden and London's West End. 

LSE was where I learned how to systematically articulate my ideas through statistical analysis and theoretical arguments, facilitated events for the diaspora community, fell in love with exploring Central London and the surrounding towns on weekends, and deepened my long-held love for arts and culture thanks to a plethora of museums, culture events and festivals. Despite the Wertherian burden from coursework and exams back then, during the spring and winter breaks, I had some of the most memorable trips to other places in Europe - Portugal, Spain, France, Scotland - just to name a few, with friends I met on campus and in dorms, whom I forged a lifelong relationship with over the years, even long after they went to different workplaces, got married and had kids, till this very day.

​

After working for a couple of years, I returned to the UK with a consulting colleague at Deloitte who also studied at the Warwick University for a short trip back to London, and to Cornwell and Ireland, where my feeling grew even stronger against the whistling cliffs and the roaring ocean. There will always be a place deep down in my heart for those rich memories, good or bad.

​

Only good actually.

Master of Arts in German Studies

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Despite a German major in undergraduate years, I decided to try my luck with humanities, social science and media-related programs in the US and the UK rather than continuing to pursue a postgraduate degree in Econ in Germany, with the hope of changing concentrations and exploring fields that always interested me, no matter how useless or commercially unviable they might have been and still are as deemed by the mundane world we live in.

However, with all the academic background and experience in German Studies, I had to go down a practical route by diversifying my applications and including programs relevant to my undergrad studies in case of a total failure or miss. In the end, probably largely thanks to my innate intuition for humanities and the long days and nights spent in libraries, prep books and exams, I was lucky enough to be admitted to the graduate programs in German Studies at the University of Maryland and Stanford University, as well as to the dual-degree Master's program in Global Media and Communications held jointly by the London School of Economics & Political Science and the University of Southern California. As much of a surprise as the former might have stroke me as, the latter was something that was even more unexpected and really intriguing. Yet as much as I sensed the allure of a new field and the British charm, I could not resist the temptation from the big farm, if not the aura surrounding it. Therefore, after putting into some thoughts, I asked for a year long deferral of enrollment with LSE, just so I got to see what the big farm could bring and change on my life.

At the end of the day, it was a no-brainer.

In early September 2009, I found myself standing under a mist of giant Californian redwood pine trees in Escondido Village after picking up my dorm key with 2 suitcases by my side. In hindsight, Stanford presented unprecedented scale and breadth of opportunity, which I probably did not fully utilize back then. However, all the courses, people and events across disciplines unveiled a multitude of different worlds, pushed me to expand and adjust my worldview.

Special thanks to professor Amir Ashel, who brought me into the juxtapositions of Jewish-German history and postwar Germany, and put on the tassel for me at the graduation ceremony of the division of languages, literature & culture - where I was the only one graduating with a Master's degree among all 9 postgraduates that year, the rest were all PhDs wearing Tudor Bonnets on stage; and professor Russell Berman, my advisor who deepened my knowledge and appreciation of German poetry, history, literature and painting (also thanks professor Daub for bringing me into the world of dystopian literature), had numerous one-on-one sessions with me on capstone projects and granted me both the luxury and the liberty to take more courses during each quarter and graduate using only half of the time in order to make it to London, which I had deferred to enroll in the following year.

​