UGA DC Semester Program

Is a blog worth it?

Don DeMaria — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:24:47 +0000

No doubt, this blog has been neglected. With other sites like Facebook and Twitter, it simply is difficult to keep up with everything. The question now is whether or not the blog makes sense? What do you think? Revive the blog or rely on other social media?

Opportunities Outside of Politics/Government

Don DeMaria — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:38:01 +0000

I talk to many students who state that the Washington Semester is not appropriate for them because they are not interested in politics or are not majoring in political science or international affairs. This is a myth that at times seems impossible to break. There are not only many paths to Washington; there are many destinations. We need skilled people in our nation’s capital in all fields and there are not many better cities than Washington, DC to pursue a career.

Case in point- The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Editorial Internships. Aspiring journalists can work for a well respected news source and have a unique experience that would stand out on a resume. Did I mention that this is a paid internship?

Bottom line- The Washington Semester Program is for you if you major in polical science, journalism, biology, landscape architecture or one of the 140 other majors at UGA.

Applications Still Accepted for Fall 2008

Don DeMaria — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:16:14 +0000

A few slot remain in the Fall 2008 Washington Semester Program! Apply now for the opportunity to live, intern and study in Washington during a national election!

During Fall 2008, we will continue to teach the Washington Seminar (WASH 3400) and Dr. Joel Clark from the UNC in Washington Program will be teaching Washington Ethics (POLS 4790). In addition to these courses, you will enroll in internship and/or directed study courses within your major.

Don’t pass up this opportunity to gain valuable work experience in DC at such an exciting time.

If you are interested visit our website or contact us for more information.

West Wing Tour

Don DeMaria — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:43:09 +0000

Last week, five students (Ryan Anderson, Nicki Bertsch, Pasley Gordon, Caitlin Monahan and Sarah Catherine Tunkle) and I toured the West Wing of the White House. This unique opportunity was given to us by UGA Alumnus Mike Mannina, who is a White House staffer. Walking into the Press Room, seeing the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office and standing outside the door to the Situation Room made me (and I hope the students as well) feel very fortunate to have such a unique opportunity. I also realized that the White House has a better home field advantage than Sanford Stadium. The rest of the group will tour the West Wing later this Spring.

From L-R: Ryan Anderson, Nicki Bertsch, Caitlin Monahan, Pasley Gordon, Sarah Catherine Tunkle and Don DeMaria

Matt Greco- Pick up the Newspaper

Don DeMaria — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:28:14 +0000

A lot of what I do at my internship involves using the internet. I use it to do research, communicate with people in my office, and to kill time once in a while reading blogs and catching up on how the Atlanta Hawks are doing. Being as I’m not particularly interested in politics, the blogs I follow are mostly either amusing ones like the Dilbert Blog, or economics ones like Freakonomics and A Marginal Revolution. There’s not really a big polarization of thought in these fields, but recently I’ve noticed something interesting when it comes to the blogs that many of my co-workers follow.

The other day I was covering for another person in my office and I decided to snoop around through their bookmarks and favorites (don’t judge me). Going down the list of sites this particular person frequents, I realized that they were increasingly leftist, from CNN.com to many other blogs like Democracy Now! and TalkLeft. This got me to wondering: Has the internet helped foster democracy or has it really hurt it? Typically, when a theoretically infinite amount of information is made readily available, the benefits should far out way the negatives. But have they?

The problem, I think, comes from the fact that while this information is so abundant, people are increasingly staying within their ideological comfort zones. One blog leads to another and soon enough your information inputs become more and more homogenous. Twenty years ago when people relied on the nightly news and newspapers for a majority of their information and opinions, there was a lot less polarization in national politics. People were forcibly exposed to viewpoints from the other side, or at least to more pragmatic and centrist ones. The enormous success of the internet has diminished this. You could also argue that the proliferation of talk radio had a similar effect In the 90’s.

Not that I want to vilify the internet for making politics today so cut-throat and generally disheartening, but I think it has most definitely had something to do with it. You see, people have limited resources (time), so people that in the past would have read both conservative and liberal editorials in a mostly centrist medium like newspapers now have no reason to do this. They can now use their spare time to leapfrog from blog to blog and keep within their comfort zone. Not to say that the political parties have become so much more ideologically separate (in fact, it might be the other way around). But there is without a doubt much less bipartisanship.

Ironically, there have probably been thousands of blog posts on exactly this topic, but I spend all my time reading Dilbert and have never seen any of them. So next time you’re killing time at the office and delving deeper and deeper into socialism or neo-conservatism, pick up a newspaper instead. Or at least just play some solitaire.