 Okay, my name is Raphael Steinmetz-Leffa. I'm a recent graduate at the Graduate Diploma in Economics as a university in London. The reason I was interested in learning economics and improving my knowledge in that area and academic knowledge in general was that I started my career upon finishing a BA in International Business Management, started my career in China in particular. While learning Chinese, SOAS was one of the pioneers in having a Confucius Institute in house, which I remember taking my exams here, so thus when it came to progressing further, I came straight to SOAS. Economics, three years ago, I joined an investment management firm and started working with investment management and investment banking. There are professional qualifications that you can obtain, there's my business knowledge and there's work experience that you get and every day that enriches your self and your work, the work you do. However, I felt that there was a lacking of academic knowledge in this area, in economics, thus why I chose to progress and do this. Initially, I chose to do a Masters and to be honest, I can't quite recall what the subject was in particular, it was a specific area of economics which I probably thought the name was very nice, sounded very good. Then, upon discussing with the academics from SOAS at the time, I decided it would be probably best for me to do the graduate diploma economics on a part-time basis, which meant I could still work and still gain professional qualifications while, during two days a week, doing something useful for my future with and gaining this knowledge in economics that I felt was key. The modules I chose, so the way it worked for me as a part-time student is you have two core modules. The core modules will be microeconomic analysis and macroeconomic analysis, so you do the first year, you do microeconomic analysis and then you have an option between econometrics and quantitative techniques in economics. I chose quantitative techniques in economics because I wanted to one, polish my mathematics as a whole. That started at a very, like I say, the course progressed very fast, but it started at a level that anybody would be able to join the course and then learn from it. Of course, when it gets to the end of the year, the demand is very big, but then on the second year, your core module will be macroeconomic analysis and then you have three options in international economics, development economics and banking and finance. I chose banking and finance because that was the most relevant with the industry I work in. So I started my career, felt that I needed support and growth and then now, because of how demanding the course was, I feel very much ready to grow further in my academic knowledge in this area.