ATS3266: Washington & The World – Washington D.C. Study Tour

25% - Presentation. You can pick absolutely any topic you like, so long as it relates to some aspect of what we’ve been doing on the tour, and talk about it for 10-12 minutes. One student focused on the electoral system, another on sexism in political media, another on the history of D.C.’s civil infrastructure, another on unpaid internships, and so on. I did mine on security theatre, and got a pretty good result.

50% - Travel Journal. You record each day in a travel journal, summarising what you did that day and what you thought about it. That’s pretty much all the instruction you're given for it – when pressed, we were told that we could have an overarching theme if we liked, or have each entry be a discrete entry that doesn’t connect to the rest of the journal, or a little from column a and b. It’s not a very structured assessment, just like this unit as a whole isn’t very structured. I usually thrive on structure, so the amount of flexibility in this unit was a shock to me at first, but once you adjust, it’s actually amazing. The journal was definitely a good way to track your progress with the unit, I liked this assessment piece.

Also we were allowed to use chat speak provided we gave an explanation ipnti (in parentheses next to it), based on the sample journal entry’s use of irl. Despite all appearances though, this was still a scholarly piece of writing, so references were expected, in whatever style we liked provided we were consistent.

25% - Take-home exam. I haven’t had this yet, so I’m not too sure what it’s going to be like. Somehow I’m not expecting it to be an essay style thing, I think it will be closer to a reflection piece with prompts, but we haven’t had any specific guidance on its content.

Bodean was second in command and, near as I could tell, was primarily responsible for coordinating travel, arranging back-ups when planned events fell through, keeping people in the loop and just generally maintaining order in what could have easily been a disorganized mess of a unit. She’s a PhD candidate and researcher in Monash’s criminology department and the Border Observatory, with a particular focus on slavery and irregular migration. Very similar to Luke, she was omnipresent in and out of prescribed class time, participated in social excursions, and was always happy to answer questions.

The unit as a whole felt like as much of a learning experience for the students as the teachers, which was good in fostering the atmosphere of experiential learning throughout the fortnight.

The purpose of ATS3266 is to, by touring and experiencing it first hand, gain an understanding of Washington D.C. and its place in the world as the centre of governance and policymaking in the most powerful nation on Earth. So what does that look like?

This unit was unlike any other unit I’ve done and, sadly, unlike any I’m likely to do in the future – unless Administrative Law really picks up its game before next year. The highlight was definitely in the people, rather than the subject matter. My peers, the academic staff, the guest speakers, all of them contributed in their own way to making the experience of the unit (and the unit emphasizes experiential learning) top notch. That’s not to suggest the sort of content this unit covers is boring though, you learn about US govt and politics from one of the best scholars on the subject in DC, about the World Bank from a senior World Bank analyst, about the international trade and copyright regimes from the US International Trade Commission, about the politics of trade and investment and commercial liberalism from none other than Jeff Sosland, and about national security and policing from members of the DOJ and FBI.

There were also visits to Capitol Hill, the SCOTUS, the National Mall including the Washington and Lincoln monuments, the 4th of July fireworks, the national press club, the Australian embassy, the Smithsonian and the Newseum (Newseum > Smithsonian tbh), Pentagon City, the International Justice Mission, the Library of Congress, KPMG’s Washington Headquarters, the National Archive, and the list just goes on and on and on. Suffice it to say, you’ll have no shortage of things to discuss in your travel journal, which is good, because it needs to be 6000 words long. Them 12 pointers man.

And all this is without even mentioning the networking opportunities. I get a bad taste in my mouth calling pub crawls, card games, and cramming into peak hour metro trains “networking”, on account of I consider the people I met on this tour (students and teachers) to be my friends. But as colleagues, they really are solid professional connections that I’ll be able to keep into the future, and that’s valuable however you choose to look at it.

I cannot recommend this unit highly enough. As I type this, I’m passing the time departing from Dulles airport. My flight was delayed so I’m going to miss my connection at LAX and spend literally 24 hours wandering about the airport and the immediate surrounds of the airport. This is my idea of hell, but even it isn’t enough to ruin the experience for me. So if you do get the chance to take this unit – jump on it. Take out an OS-HELP loan through Monash Abroad, take on extra shifts at work, get an advanced payment from Centrelink, beg your parents for a handout, whatever. It’s definitely worth every cent of the price tag*, even if all it amounts to is one line on your resume - “Graduate – SPExS (2017)” to your resume.

In summary:
* Return flights to DC: $2074
* Accommodation and meals at AU: $2000
* Money spent on food, bevs, metro trains, ubers, New York to Washington mega buses, and two nights in a New York YMCA: $900* Watching the deputy director of the Global Terrorism Research Centre be forced, tears in eyes and head in hands, to say the phrase “a sad handjob” during Cards Against Humanity: priceless.

I’m including this because I feel like it’s relevant and doesn’t fit elsewhere. ATS3266 was hosted by American University in Washington D.C., near Tenleytown. The main liaison with AU was Dr. Robin Lee, as part of the Washington Semester Program in the School of Professional and Extended Studies. As a host institution, AU were perfectly fine. The food was alright, breakfast aside (Americans, based on my time in New York and DC, either cannot or will not make even average egg dishes – scrambled eggs, fried eggs, eggs benny, omelets… it’s all crap). The rooms were fine, my shower was amazing but other people had almost no shower pressure, so I guess it’s a game of inches. It’s also a very spacious and very pretty campus, and there’s a Starbucks open on weekdays.

One downside was that AU was a dry campus. No alcohol allowed on or near campus, including the dorms. That meant that any late night parties (we weren’t being disruptive, we were pretty much the only residents in Centennial Hall on our floor, and there’s a huge door between Anderson and Centennial that effectively shuts off all noise) had to be pretty discrete. Still not sure how a few guys managed to get a keg upstairs, but god bless Aussie ingenuity. Be mindful that a passport is required as proof of age for purchasing alcohol (and obviously that age in the states is 21, not 18).

The info desk on the first floor of the halls was pretty hopeless. They took 5 times longer to do anything than should have been necessary, and almost never resolved any issues we had unless that issue was getting a new towel or directions to a bus stop. Several people’s room cards messed up in the last few days of the tour and they just gave us temporary visitor cards and a number to manually enter to access the dining hall instead of replacing them.

Also there’s either a much greater cultural divide between Aussies and Americans than I first expected, or Americans are assholes with the social awareness of 6 year olds when it comes to a number of issues. Two American students walked into a room during presentations, and then mindlessly chatted to each other while loudly washing their dishes. We were forced to relocate due to their reprehensible obliviousness.

We also had access to the gym. Like most of AU, it was serviceable but not much more. It wasn’t equipped amazingly, but you could do just about everything, other than deadlifts due to the small size of even the heaviest plates. There was one squat rack and an undersupply of plates. Also, obvious translation issues with kgs to lbs.

All told, I think AU was a slightly more than adequate place to study. It was certainly no Georgetown but it was a lot better than what it could have been.

Luke is a senior lecturer, honours coordinator, and the deputy director of GTReC at Monash. He replaced Remy Davison after Remy had to drop out. I was kind of disappointed because going into this unit, I had certain preconceptions as to what it would be like with Remy at the helm, and what it would be like with Luke, who seemed less formal in structuring assessments, and more focused on museums and tours than on learning about international relations.

He didn’t just exceed my expectations, he shattered them and fostered in our group what was well and truly the most productive, enjoyable and stimulating learning environment I’ve ever been a part of.

We literally had 24 hour access to him. On our first day he took a handful of us out to a BBQ joint for lunch. (That was revisited on 4 different occasions over the remaining fortnight) He came along to outings to the baseball, local pubs, card games, study sessions, you name it. The night before my presentation he, I, and two other people were chatting about counter-terrorism in our PJs at 1am. I’ve never had an experience like that before at any point in my schooling. I’ve never had a teacher I could chat to over facebook during class. I am legitimately worried that I might never get it this good again for the rest of my degree.

I don’t want to give the impression that this was some sort of lazy, incoherent, footy trip of a unit. The tour had definite structure to it, there were set times for speakers, we had to be in certain places at certain times, there were deadlines that were enforced, and rubrics that were followed. But it definitely had an informal feel to it, and it complemented the experiential learning part of the brief of this unit.

In addition to Luke and Bo, there was a raft of other guest lecturers, usually about two a day. My favourite speakers were Jeff Sosland of AU, Gaurav Nayyar of the World Bank (brilliant communicator, his ability to thoroughly explain technical terms at an accessible level was A1) and Tim Gehring of the International Justice Mission who took a hard grilling from our cohort like an absolute champ and came off looking pretty good.

This is a new unit, and the exam was a take home.

ten hundred thousand jillion out of 5

lol no, you can think of the whole thing as one big lecture if you like

Nothing. There are no set readings for this unit. There are a handful of suggested readings posted on moodle, but many of them aren’t super relevant as plans changed as the tour was unfolding.

24/7

Term 3, 2016 (also n.b., this is a 12cp unit)

TBD