Finance?

In many ways right now I feel like Becky Bloomwood in Confessions of a Shopaholic (the book, not the movie), where she's on that tv show giving financial advice to people and her bank manager sees it and says 'Rebecca Bloomwood is advising people on how to handle money?!?'. Truthfully, in the book it is an ironic situation, and it is equally here. Now why do I feel this way you ask?

A month, or even a week ago, if you'd asked me about finance I'd have said that it's a topic that I avoid at all costs. Inflation is about the extent of vocabulary I understand in the field. In fact, the economics requirement is the primary reason I did not transfer into the SFS, a decision I've regretted many times. Now, whoever has decided that I am qualified to write a paper for publication by the UN on human rights, government, and finance in Africa or something of that nature, must be off their rocker right? Those of you who know me, and I assume all my readers do (if you do not, that's kind of creepy that you're reading this, actually), will know that money and I don't mix particularly well. Sure, I understand that it exists and that I am a spendthrift, at least according to my parents, I don't believe I shop that much, but economics, investments, mutual funds, asset management, etc are all things that exist in some vague parallel universe for me. However, I am now going to be spending tomorrow locked up in my room eagerly awaiting Germany's start into the World Cup and researching years worth of financial information that I never bothered to learn. Should be interesting, right?

Let's start with how I got to this place. I intern at the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative. Essentially, they study how climate change, biodiversity, and human rights are affected by financial institutions and make recommendations to them on how to better apply environmental, social, and governance principles. I thought it sounded really interesting, as the UN is often not effective because it doesn't take the private sector into account, and the private sector drives the public sector in many ways. And yes, finance is a large part of that. On the whole, it's really interesting. They also do things like the green economy initiative and so on. Actually fascinating stuff. So for the first few days, I had lots of meetings and read a lot of material and learned about the workings of the initiative and did little actual work, and then on Friday I finally met with the human rights person who decided to revamp the section and do all these webinars and stuff that I would help her in setting up. Enter the head of the unit.

Shortly after this, I had coffee with my incredibly busy boss, the head of the whole initiative, (why he decided he had to time for coffee with me is still up in the air), who decided that since I was only here for seven weeks, he was going to help me get the most of my internship, do something really substantive, and improve my resume all in one. So now my project for the next six weeks is researching, calling a lot of financial institutions presumably, and writing a paper for publication on a topic to be decided, but something about human rights, either Africa or Asia, and financial institutions. Daunting, yes, but also really, really cool. In short, I adore my boss, who's probably the most amusing character I've ever met. And used to be a journalist, so we bonded. Overall, I'm pretty excited, not only because I get to have this thing published and not do menial tasks for six more weeks, but because I actually feel like I'll learn a great deal from it. So here's to researching finance. Two words I thought I'd never say.