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Some Reflections on the IED experience from former students
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Much of the
curriculum was riddled with issues and ideas that had never really sat in my
mind, and I instantly began to change my mode of thinking. I did not expect
to be changed by this program, but I was. The experience began with my
interaction with my peers. All at once I was thrown into a melting pot that
was filled with environmental thinkers, and politically minded individuals.
Both inside and outside of class, I was continually learning new ways of
seeing the world.
My experiences
with South Africa and Mozambique will remain with me for the rest of my life
and I am thankful that I was given the opportunity to travel to such places
under a program such as this one. My perspective on the world has
inevitably changed, and my experiences expanded beyond the barriers in which
they were held.
Matthew Harmon, Brown University |
The International Environment and
Development program was the perfect “capstone course” for my
undergraduate work, because it provided real world experience to complement
my three and a half years of academic learning.
As a political
science major ... I learned about organizations like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, NGOs ... and government agencies like USAID and the Department of
State. All these organizations seemed larger than life and completely
inaccessible to an average citizen like me. IED opened my eyes and the door
to many of these places and made their work and their employees real to me.
Sarah Fellon, Elizabethtown College
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Meeting all these
people who have done/are doing amazing things has really inspired me, and
refueled my desire to do something amazing too. I don’t know what yet, but I
will…or I will at least try.
This semester has been a continuous cycle of idealism, knowledge
acquisition, disillusionment, confusion, recognition, acceptance, getting a
better understanding of things, and regaining a better informed, more
directed idealism. I have seen myself mature through it all. I am really
excited to go back to my home school to tear it up for one more year, and
show them everything I’ve gained while I’ve been away.
Joanna Meade, Sweet Briar College |
This semester has been invaluable in helping me to gain a better sense of
environment and development issues not only from the first world policy
arena, but from a first person perspective on the ground in a developing
country. Every course I have taken in the past relied on the ability of the
professor alone to lecture and share his or her experiences with the subject
at hand. The Washington Semester program immersed me in an entirely new
system. Along with the class professor, professionals from the policy
community contributed their knowledge to our education and helped to create
connections between what was learned in class and how policy-makers and NGOs
work in the field.
By far the trip to
Africa impacted me the most; as I’m sure it did with every other student.
Rarely do students of my age get to experience and witness a culture first
hand that is so different from what we have known our whole lives. South
Africa stood out due to the unbelievable juxtaposition of the absolute
poverty in the townships and rural areas as compared to the white wealth
seen around Cape Point and the Waterfront area.
Matthew Ungar, Occidental College |
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....when it comes to how much I
learned this semester I could write forever. I had an idea of what I wanted
to do with my life before D.C., or at least I thought I did, but I learned
quickly how much more there was for me.
... and it was seeing our speakers and
[professor Domask] especially that helped me to redefine my work ethic,
which is going to have an effect on the rest of my life....In terms of
actual knowledge of international environment and development, I feel like I
learned more this semester than I will be able to learn in any other
classroom or any combination of classrooms for the rest of my life.
Patrick Higdon,
University of Tennessee |
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Overall, this
semester has changed me and my perspective. I’ve never felt so lucky in my
life. Knowing that others live with so little, made my heart ache and want
to do something for them. It is such an eye-opening experience to see what
we saw in Africa. It is impossible to not be changed.
I really believe
the South Africa / Mozambique aspect of the IED course is invaluable. It
provided so much insight and understanding of things we learned in DC.
Empowering women stuck out in my mind as one of the most important things to
accomplish before development could take place. We discussed this concept in
class, and our speakers from Population Action International really brought
it home with their video that they showed us.
While in DC, I knew that the status of women was an indicator of the level
of poverty, but traveling to South Africa helped me to recognize the extreme
importance of this concept. Everywhere we went in Africa, there were women
carrying children on their backs while balancing buckets of water and other
various things on their heads, walking along the dirt roads.
Elizabeth Aitken, Baylor University
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The entire experience is one that will definitely stay with me for the rest
of my life and continue to have an effect on how I see, live in and
understand the wider world around me.
In terms of the
academic elements of the semester I feel as if I have captured a more
complete, real world understanding of the developmental and environmental
issues which face so many of the world’s developing countries.
I feel as if I
have learned something about people and myself that could not be easily
learned outside of sharing an experience as unique as Washington Semester
and the Africa trip.
Deuel Ross,
University of Southern California |
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I realized and learned that
Washington D.C. is the city where you want to be when you study or are into
political, developmental, and environmental issues because of all the
multilateral institutions, NGO’s, think tanks and embassies. The
opportunity of going to the IMF, the World Bank, [and] several NGO’s to hear
from important speakers as senators, field people was great.
Daniela Zuluaga,
Universidad Externado de Colombia |
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