Speech by Lori-Rae van Laren, MPP closing ceremony on

9 June 2016

I remember that first orientation day at the MSM [ed. Maastricht

School of Management], a long time ago. I walked in, dripping
in the delightful combination of sweat and rain that only cycling
in the Netherlands can induce, and I headed straight for the
nearest corner of the room clutching the blue ring binder with
information for new students that was handed to me like my life
depended on it. As I read the contents of that folder over and
over in order to avoid eye contact with the rest of the room, I
heard someone whose name tag said he was from Luxemburg,
but he had the strongest American accent Id heard in a while.
And a loud, Spanish voice rattling off work hed done for
organisations with names that were basically just acronyms
(and that Id never even heard of). I remember thinking, Lori
Europe is weird and cold and youre completely out of your
depth but you can survive one year without friends, just keep
your head down and read your ring binder.
When I found out I was giving this speech, I wasnt sure I was
the right person for the job. Im an outlier in some respects. Im
in a specialisation that isnt social protection (innovation
represent) and this year is the longest amount of time Ive ever
spent in continental Europe. Im a South African, with a fairly
liberal academic background in social science. Punctuality and
efficiency do not come easily to me, spontaneity and mild
chaos do. This year for me has been equal measures of learning
about public policy and learning how to navigate day to day life
outside of my normal context. In fact, some of the best advice I
received from a fellow South African was, Lori, we are used to
microwaves. But Germans are like ovens, they take a lot of time
to warm up.
But despite my less than desirable start to the MPP programme
(and everything I have just said), if I now had to sum up this
year in one wordit would be connection. This experience has

been one of almost countless connections with people whom I

am now proud to call my colleagues...and friends. This time has
been brief, and its made up of even smaller moments with so
many of you. Its made up of the few minutes of conversation of
the top of the cube snatched during a break in a lecture, its the
quick personal jokes across a tutorial room, its the exuberant
waving as you speedily cycle past a fellow MPP on the Vrijthof
(or maybe this is just me and the rest of you are not hazards to
society when youre on the road). This is the consequence of a
short time with this many great people the feeling that there
are so many more moments you wish could have had.
And at the same time, there are real and lasting connections.
There are the long nights of working on assignments; there are
the long nights of not working on assignments. Throughout the
year, there has been the shared joy of each deadline met and
the collective mourning for the deadlines still to come. We have
progressively made ourselves irrelevant to the world outside
the cube, sharing a language of experiences that only other
MPP people understand. We are probably terrible company at
other peoples parties but when were together as a cohort,
were unstoppable. For all of us, there are those few people who
we know will be in our lives for a long time to come. Most of us
havent really seen that much of the city but weve spent hours
in each others houses and in each others lives.
And I hope for most of you there has also been a connection
with the people, who very soon, you will represent in your
workplaces. I had a revelation moment at some point during
our Introduction to Data Science course. After hours of
nonsensical Stata output about Kyrgyzstan streaming across
my computer screen, I suddenly turned to one of my fellow
tutorial members and said, Household Identity Number 26143
is a real person, a real person. This brief moment of humanity
was almost immediately followed by the thought, they are also
an outlier and theyre really messing up my regression so I
might just drop them. Our field of study and work gives us an
incredible opportunity to connect with other people. Connection

requires understanding, connection requires us to reach beyond

our own paradigms and meet other people where they are. I
hope we never lose sight of the people on the other side of our
data analysis. I hope we recognise the value of outliers and
[things] that dont suit our predefined theories and worldviews.
May we always be able to step outside of our context.
This course has been a rollercoasterfast paced, intense and
most of us have been screaming the entire way through,
wondering why we paid money for this. As soon as we had
wrapped our heads around policy analysis, we were wrenched
into public economics and that was only the beginning. But
between the policy circle, the deadweight loss triangle and the
R-squared value, I think we can all agree that something really
amazing has begun to take shape.
I had no idea what this year would look like. I never expected to
be a public policy student in a small Dutch city. And I did not
expect to find people like you. I am still not sure what the future
looks like, but I know that for all of us, its brighter than the
orange cube. What a time to be alive. Go well, walk humbly and
stay true to who you are. Ladies and gentlemen of the MPP
cohort 2015/2016, its been a pleasure.

Lori-Rae van Laren