Tuesdays with Rosenau 01

This is an instance of what?

James Rosenau is a very famous scholar in the international relations. I think that he is perhaps one of the most reputed professors that we have in Elliott School. Harry Harding is not at Elliott this year; he is also very famous. They are one of the reasons why I chose GWU last year.

This semester I have Professor Rosenau every Tuesday, tackling the turbulence in world politics. As he explained the syllabus, every student is quite astonished because one needs to write two book assessments and 12 5-7 page papers. It means that students would literally write 14 papers and that it’s one paper per week. Although the assignment seems to be tough, there are still around 20 students who stay the following week.

He is a very old professor and he is on the motorized wheel chair at the moment. He is, however, full of zeal and energy. For the first class, he gave us a sentence to think about every little thing. “Of what is this an instance?” When we think of everything in our life and in academia, we have to ask us the nature of materials or the questions that we are facing. He said this is the most fundamental thing he wants to tell us. Then he said that saying absolutely, completely and totally is forbidden in class because these words don’t actually add the meaning to the phrase. Every body laughed and jot it down. Ha ha.

Wish I can survive his class. 14 papers…here I come!