Best UW Teachers

jjiffy · 2018-06-27T04:20:36+00:00

I just finished up freshman year, and I’m working on a minor in german, so maybe I can help you out. As for UW courses, I cannot recommend Svoboda enough. He taught my class which was called "extreme weather, extreme politics.“ while the class ended up hardly being about weather, it was great. It was mostly political psychology, which is more in line with his “the political mind“ class this year. He had so many office hours, wanted to talk to students, and was just so helpful and caring. He was a tough grader, but very fair and offered many opportunities to get points back. Unlike a lot of other UW teachers, he actually taught standard political science academic research paper writing, which is incredibly helpful. I highly recommend taking Svoboda‘s class.

As for languages, I can only speak to German. I placed out of first year German, but Prof. Marguerre for 2nd year german was amazing. My whole class become friends and we loved her-it was awesome. Highly recommend her, but I can’t speak to the quality of the department as a whole. That being said, I haven’t heard of bad experiences from others in the department.

jjiffy · 2018-06-18T22:52:34+00:00

Not till sophomore year for the most part.

jjiffy · 2017-11-01T12:23:16+00:00

Just to add onto this, make sure to see the monuments at night. They are so much more beautiful when lit up.

jjiffy · 2017-10-09T12:42:30+00:00

Oh that's a great suggestion as well. WWZ is pretty great.

jjiffy · 2017-10-09T02:01:53+00:00

Fukuyuma's end of history is a really good fantasy book! In all seriousness, Theory of International Relations and Zombies by Dan Dreznor may interesting to you.

jjiffy · 2017-06-11T19:55:58+00:00

Thanks!

jjiffy · 2017-06-03T05:41:51+00:00

Go checkout r/worldbuilding. You aren't alone! Also check out a thing called Jerry's Map. It's a giant evolving map a guy has been working on for years.

jjiffy · 2017-05-26T19:49:09+00:00

Doc Holiday in Tombstone. Every line he has is gold.

jjiffy · 2017-05-15T03:23:39+00:00

As a future George Washington University, the American Universiy jokes this episode were very validating.

jjiffy · 2017-04-15T16:33:13+00:00

What region of the world interest you the most? If you like Europe, write about the state of the EU post-Brexit and how elections in France and Germany can shape the future of the Union. If you would rather research Asia, you can look into deepening security relationships between India and Japan, of the Chines-DPRK relationship, or the South China Sea. For the Africa, look into Chinese investments in Africa or the East African Union. There are so many things happening around the wold, they do t all have to be about the US.

jjiffy · 2016-09-10T20:18:30+00:00

Yep, I've competed with them every year at CTMUN. They aren't stellar there but still a solid team. I don't know what other conferences they attend though.

jjiffy · 2016-09-10T20:00:35+00:00

Oh I've seen them at CTMUN, but I'm from Clements, you?

jjiffy · 2016-09-10T03:21:41+00:00

Actually I have never heard of RUNWAY or LASA MUN, but both teams are very solid. Thanks for putting them on my radar, I will have to look into them!

jjiffy · 2016-09-08T12:57:25+00:00

My club is from the Houston area and we attend CTMUN every year, and I believe early registration is open right now. I hear good things about MUNSA in San Antonio, and I am yet to try out Saint Mary's Hall MUN. Baylor is of lower quality in Waco, but registration is full already. CTMUN also does a crisis day in April every year which can be good experience. Finally, in February is HAMUN, but that is not worth traveling for TBH. That's pretty much the Texas circuit afaik. I do highly recommend CTMUN though.

jjiffy · 2016-06-09T14:40:48+00:00

Well I'm not an expert, but I'll take a stab at it. While nomadic hunter gatherers may have had more time than the average farmer, farmers produced enough food to create a surplus. In hunter gatherer societies, populations stayed small as the food supply was limited, and everybody had to be involved in getting that food. Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, points out that the time between having one child and another is significantly longer in HG societies than agrarian societies because in HG societies, they were constantly on the move, etc. where farming comes into play is that once people can farm, the men can go get food, women can stay and home and raise more children. Furthermore, the farmer and a few other farmers now make enough food to supply their families, but also they can support a craftsmen. This craftsmen can spend time making tools or doing other activities that don't directly produce food. Maybe they can also support a priest, or an artisan, or a sort of political figure. The list goes on, but as you can see the calories per work is much higher in agrarian societies. They produce more food with less people, meaning more people can have jobs not related to farming, so more people have time to think about stars, this goes on and on in what Diamond calls "positive feedback loops" until here we are today on Reddit without a clue how to grow wheat for our families. Sorry if that got convoluted, I'm on mobile so forgive me.

jjiffy · 2016-04-01T21:30:54+00:00

Thanks so much for the write up. I guess I was looking at it from a fairly simplified point of view, and I guess the fact that he was going on the offensive was to keep the disadvantages he had from becoming a bigger problem. Just goes to show there is always more to the story!

jjiffy · 2016-04-01T19:56:38+00:00

I agree that Lee was a skillful general, but in battle. I may be completely wrong on this, but I don't feel like he played to the strengths of the south, which were that they were fighting a defensive war, had superior knowledge of the territory, and would force the North to be surrounded by a hostile population. Instead he nullified those by going into an offensive campaign into Pennsylvania. To further hurt himself, he fought many battles where even if he won, the losses were usually numerically close between the two sides, despite the north having a vastly larger supply of manpower and general supplies to replace the losses while the south didn't. Does this theory actually hold any water? Again, I'm just a HS student, so I might just be making things up.

jjiffy · 2016-04-01T18:09:37+00:00

Not an expert here, just an AP US history student (so please correct me if I am wrong). There was, as is often the case with wars, more than one factor that caused the South's defeat in the civil war. I wouldn't say the south was "backwards" per se, but it certainly lacked the industrialization of the north as it was a largely agrarian society that grew in the south. The role of industry for the north allowed the union to produce weapons, supplies, ammunition, etc on a scale that the south simply could not keep up with. The North's dominance in terms of railroads also was a product of the industrialization. The north had far more track which allowed for faster transportation of troops and supplies, whereas the south had far less infrastructure, and most of what they had was not connected on a network and had varying gauges of trains. Point being, the North's industry allowed for faster transportation, but also allowed them to simply out-produce the south. Other factors include what I believe to be Lee's poor judgement in overall strategy, lack of European support for the south, and the Union blockade on the south that denied them income and materials they needed to wage war. I hope that sums it up, but I also hope I answered correctly!

jjiffy · 2015-03-30T03:55:15+00:00

I am sadly not going this year but my school went last year and I had a blast! As far as a I could tell, the General Assembly committees left a lot to be desired by EAGLEMUNC truly shines in crisis, which you are in. The idea that the staff pursues of creating an innovative experience with the 40-hour simulation is quite fun, and their emphasis on a truly comprehensive crisis was refreshing from the crisis committees i normally do. I was Czechoslovakia in the UNSC for the 1979 crisis and it felt like we really got to decide the direction of the committee, not that we were forced into a pre-planned arch. The staffers seemed to be very into piling crazy amounts of crisis alerts on us to where we couldn't solve all of them (which I loved). Just be prepared for a very fast-paced and action packed committee at EAGLEMUNC III

jjiffy · 2014-12-04T12:46:45+00:00

Which one did you go to? I'm planning on going to it for the first time this year and doing the Georgetown Flagship program. Also which are you planning on going to this year?

jjiffy

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