Today, during my last day of work at the ITRC, I had the pleasure of seeing my former professor in Political Scientist, Professor Maria Riemann. She's a visiting professor here who should be immediately tenured as she was, without a doubt, one of the top 5 professor I encountered here at UNC.
She "does" Marxist Theory - which is probably why she won't be seeing a tenure offer anytime soon. We got to talking about UNC's Political Science Department and it's lacking qualities in relation to the discipline. You see, I've graduated with a degree that means very little. I have no real understanding of what it would mean were I to do research as a Political Scientist. If I were to seek a PhD, what would I study? How would I study it? I have no earthly idea. This is, without a doubt, a problem. UNC's POLI department has failed to prepare me for further studies in the same discipline.
This leads me to other problems with my liberal arts education. It was never made entirely clear to me what all the different Social Sciences were, how they differed, and how they thought. For instance - what is Sociology and how do Sociologists do their work? How is it different from Anthropology? These kinds of questions should have been answered upon arriving at Carolina. Anyone interested in the Social Sciences should have been given the tools to discern what the different departments did different from one another and also how they were similar.
This is also (maybe even especially) crucial for those choosing to major in an inter-disciplinary field. International Studies, for instance, is made up of many different kinds of academics who think very differently from one-another. Any major in that field should be prepared to deal with those differences. Without that kind of preparation, I would expect students in that area to wind up extremely confused as to what it is that an International Studies academic does. That's why I tell all incoming students who are thinking about majoring in a field like this to consider double-majoring in another non-inter-disciplinary subject, like Anthropology. That will help them make sense of the rest of the field.
I've had the opportunity this summer to train new students with their laptops at orientation. Students also register for classes during this two-day program, so they inevitably have questions for me about classes. I do not hesitate to offer advice - especially to those students interested in the social sciences. High School certainly does not prepare students to understand what a liberal arts education is and what the different areas of study are. Neither, unfortunately, do UNC's advisors (at least in my experience). Think back to your "Social Studies" courses in High School and Middle School. That certainly did not make clear what it was that Social Scientists do (I remember hearing about Bowers v. Hardwick and our professor refusing to explain what sodomy was, telling us to ask the person next to us if we didn't know).
In any case, I find myself wondering what, if anything, I might choose to pursue a PhD in later in life. I had for some time not considered moving on to Political Science because our department here was so incoherent that I'm left wondering what it would mean to devote my life to the subject. After hearing Cathy Cohen speak at the ISAACS conference (see previous blog entry), I think I might reconsider that decision. Now I've just got to figure out what Political Science is. Any ideas?
