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Happy New Year!
Sorry it has been so long since I have posted, but the last semester was such a busy semester for me. I took some time off to really focus on school work and apply for jobs. The job seeking process is a welcomed change from class work at times, but is no less stressful.
I have been working on my application for different government jobs, at the federal level, the state level (Missouri, New York, Maryland), and the local level (Washington DC, Kansas City, Baltimore, Alexandria, New York). I have even been looking in the non-profit and private sector for some jobs. It is a interesting time to be looking for employment. A lot of us are in the in between catergory where we have enough education but not enough experience. It is also still a tough climate out there. While the baby boomers are retiring, firms are still reluctant to hire. So that is fun. And by fun, I mean not at all.
This past semester I really enjoyed the classes I was enrolled in. It was the first semester where we had all elective courses and I was in all of the ones I wanted. I took a course on National Security which was fascinating as we discussed IR theory, democratization, soft power, and what US aims actually are and the methods we use to achieve them. the title of my final paper was “For God and Country: The moral imperative to remove nuclear weapons from the US National Security Strategy”. I chose this topic because I believe that there is a way for our national security to be secured and still have a strong respect for freedom and human life and not be listed as hypocritical. While securing our national interest, as well as protecting the majority of human rights, may have casualties, there are ethics and ways in which this is done and that is accepted by the global community as well as the American people. So the question that I raised was if national security is about securing the nation, does that mean that we must also secure the values that the nation believes in as well? I was working from the assumption that the answer to that question must be in the affirmative. And if that was the case, then the indiscriminate taking of human life goes against the grain of America, and therefore, nuclear weapons are inherently immoral. It was a caveat, but with an exception in the form that they could be used for deterrence but only if non-proliferation and arms control are considered as a part of deliberate policy by the United States. It was fun for me to look at the argument, and I think going to a place like Pepperdine is amazing in that my professors allowed me to bring up this prospective and use passages from the Bible to solidify my point. Private Christian education at its finest!
I also took a class on Eastern Europe. When it comes to European understanding, Americans tend to write off everything west of Germany. But there is important things that are crucial to our past, present and future. My focus in the class was on strategic engagement with the newest economic and semi political block of countries called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Since there is such little literature about the topics, my final paper discussed how to engage each country individually, while taking into consideration the power of the countries combined as the BRIC. The goal was to explore the relationship with each country and how to make their connection with the US stronger, possibly making the United States very influential with the BRIC. The basis of the paper was that the United States should think of engagement with the BRIC like masonry, and every mason knows that when building with BRICs, you always want to have a cornerstone. I argued that America should strive to be the political cornerstone for as many of the BRIC countries as possible, thereby becoming the cornerstone of BRIC itself.
I also took a course on the political campaign process. Learning about a lot of the inner workings of campaigns is important for many reasons. I did not really think about how it impacts my life, but when you think about campaign ads, signs in your yard, petitions, exit polling, etc. it really involves us and takes a lot of consideration from the people who are running the campaigns. It is important from the state and local side as we are intrigued by how people run their campaigns and how scandals or misquotes can really through you off. A great example is the Meg Whitman campaign which threw a lot of money in the campaign process, but was struck hard by the immigrant nanny situation, as well as her lack of relate-ability to the general California electorate. It also is interesting on the international scale as we go over to other nations trying to democratize and we help them set up their campaigns like this. All fascinating!
The other class I took that semester was a course called Children, Families and Communities. This class, while I was not sure what it was going to be talking about, discussed how public policy plays a role in our family and our local communities. The politics that surround families (gay marriage, co-habitation, single parents, divorce, etc), to the policies that affect our communities (race, poverty, education, etc.) We had two presentations in the class. One was group based in which we talked about funding higher education for emancipated foster youth (they really are some of the most forgotten of our society) and my individual presentation was on needs-based assessment in k-12 education (which is considered to be a better standard of measuring student performance because it takes into account non-educational factors such as poverty).
All of my classes were really fun and I liked the work that I produced in each of them. I am also looking forward to the classes I am taking this coming semester (starting tomorrow! Yikes!). Tell you all more soon!
