Extra-curricular opportunities - they're all over the place.

Hey folks,

My name is Jeremy, I'm another member of the illustrious season 1 cast. I'm also a first year Masters candidate here at SIS.

I think I'll take a minute here to talk about what goes on around here at SIS outside of class. No matter if you like to get heavily involved with student organizations, activist groups, attending lectures, or just hanging out at SIS happy hours, there's something here for you. Adam mentioned this in his post about the positives and negatives of attending school part time vs. full time, and I'd definitly agree on this one - if you decide to go full time and get a part time job (or no job) you'll actually have the time to do all the extra-curricular stuff that happens here every day. And really, if you use your time here well, your classes will only be half the experience. There's so much outside class to get involved with that will allow you to network with people working in your field as well as your fellow classmates. You know the old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Well, there's a good bit of truth to it, and there's no better way to get to know your classmates, professors, and the speakers who come through here than to get involved with what they're doing here on campus.

I'm a fan of all the speakers AU regularly brings in to give talks. If this is you too, your best friend will be the SIS listserves (both the general SIS one and the ones specific to your programs). Most people get really annoyed with recieving lots of email, but if you can handle that, you'll find out about many more of the talks, conferences, and events that go on here every week. For instance, tonight James Bamford will be giving a talk on the politicization of the intelligence process and how that is affecting our relationship with Iran today. I've been a Bamford fan since reading his two books The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets. The Puzzle Palace was the first book ever published to publicly disclose the existence of the NSA, and he wrote Body of Secrets a few years later based on massive amounts of new NSA information he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Speakers like this come through here suprisingly frequently, and its definitly smart to make time to attend them.