 Hi, my name is Arjun Pradalkar and I'm a sophomore from Mumbai, India studying quantitative economics and international relations. This last year I've been part of the Epic Colloquium and I've also been the treasurer of the new initiative for Middle East Peace, which is a student think tank that focuses on sustainable solutions in the Middle East. For Epic specifically, our topic has been migration in a turbulent world. Last year I attended the symposium and was convinced by my friends to take this rigorous course and I was incredibly delighted that I did. We have learned about the social, political and economic impacts of migration in host countries and countries of origin. We have looked at various facets of migration such as remittances, brain drain, brain gain and the variety of education that migrants receive as well. My most memorable was the discussion with Zoltan Fahir where we discussed Hungary's policies in migration. Learning about a case study like that really helped me put the migration debate into a context and helped me understand the different facets of migration in isolation as well. And I think just because we have had a shared experience of going through a year-long years worth of effort, I think there has been a major bond between the Epic class as well as people in the IGL as well. We started off very long ago at the Epic retreat where none of us really knew each other but got together while playing football in the massive field at the retreat. We built both graphs that some of us did better than the others. We had a barbecue, just had discussions about things that helped us understand who we were and that definitely gave a more personal touch to a class like Epic rather than an irregular class of just an hour and 15 minutes per day and it definitely fostered in a sense of responsibility yet affection for everybody in the group. A crucial moment for us was when we were discussing the debate between integration and assimilation and some students definitely had differing opinions about whether or not migrants should be assimilated into their country or whether they should integrate and be a crucial role and it was interesting for me to see how different people had their opinions based on where they're from or which country they were talking through the lens of and yet despite that the fact that we could come together and laugh about it at the end showed how great our group was at this time as well. The panel that I was in charge of was South to South migration and how it's shaping our world. The main reason for choosing this panel was to understand the other side of the migration debate which doesn't which considers migration that is not only from the South to North but South to South which covers almost two-thirds of migration during between the period of 2005 and 2015. The biggest takeaway for me from my panel was to understand how we should not be categorizing migration as South to South but understanding its broader implications moving away from the South and understanding how migrants have had to move due to different circumstances and how their impact has caused different countries to reconsider their policies. We began, we started NIMEP in fall of 2018 and our goal was to try and bring in people from a different, who had different opinions but still were very interested in the Middle East. Me personally I hadn't researched as much about the Middle East which was my first motivation to be part of NIMEP and be amongst a group of people who were deeply passionate about the Middle East so that I could just, so that their knowledge could just rub off on me. For the research trip we were a group of 15 students that were as a group very passionate about understanding how Morocco deals with a variety of political issues. After Marrakesh we decided to go to Casablanca as our last step where I conduct very very conducted interviews with people including the president of the IR Foundation and an independent journalist who definitely helped us take a more critical view of Moroccan policies. The two events have also been very helpful for me in understanding how there's a very big difference in what we study in class and how different it is on the ground especially how different opinions are divided in a country that you were studying about. Morocco as an example was very divided on the issues of how migrants should be treated or how the success of the government in implementing policies for migration have evolved. So it definitely gave me an idea that it really depends on who you ask and whose opinion you consider and therefore to use a variety of opinions to create an answer that you believe is correct and it also taught me of how to always build on something that I know without assuming anything and always take information from everywhere. And lastly I think these two events have been such a formative experience for me as well in terms of having a group having groups that I think I will remember forever and having connections that I will definitely remember forever.