Student Roundtable

Kristina Keating
Senior, Northern Arizona University

Video Presentation
Conference Discussion

Throughout my study of Political Science, I have been fortunate to have family experiences and personal employment which have provided me with knowledge that compliments my academic study of public administration to more accurately portray what it is like to be at the level of an average employee.

Once I started taking higher level classes in Political Science and started recognizing the common themes in the different aspects of politics, I began to relate them to my own real life situations. When I was in high school, my mother began her current employment working at a state governmental agency. This was my first exposure to the view of the government by one of its employees. Then, during my second semester as a Political Science major, I was taking a public administration course. In this class I worked on a project where I read articles on different perspectives of the same type of employment as my mother's. I applied the present knowledge I had obtained through my mother and stories from her everyday experiences to the theories and perspectives I was learning about at the time. This was the first time I had related my studies directly to a real life experience, which was just the beginning of my experiences with politics.

The next opportunity I had occurred during the summer before my senior year in college when I became employed for the summer as a bailiff for the Superior Court of Arizona- Maricopa County. I received credit for this toward my major, as I was expected to relate my knowledge from the Judicial Politics course I had just completed the semester before to the court system from an employee's perspective.

I found that the course had provided me with a structural background for many of the procedures, while also an giving me some insight to the behaviors I was to expect from the judges and other court staff. Once I got to know many of the court staff, including the judges, I recognized some of the common perceptions and misperceptions, that many of the textbooks had illustrated. I observed the way court staff perceived many of the defendants in the criminal courts, most of them possessing opinions of individuals before their case was even brought up in court. There was a common opinion of placing the individuals in a "group" where they labeled negatively before any action was even taken. This was common at all levels of the court, and was a part of everyday behavior.

I found this job fascinating in many respects, especially being able to watch the interaction between the different levels of people who make the court system run as it does. This type of information can be discussed in a classroom setting however, one does not fully understand the workings of a public institution unless they are in that particular setting for a long enough time to recognize the patterns of behavior which occur repeatedly.

Reflecting on the experiences I have had throughout my undergraduate career, I also think of the ones I had that were a direct result of a particular professor's expectations for the course. These were experiences when I was forced to closely examine a sector of the local government by participating in a meeting, rally, etc. Two of my lower-level classes required an outside-of-class assignment where the students were required to attend a City Council or County Board of Supervisors meeting. These were meetings I probably would not have attended if it were not part of the course. Besides the fact that it was an excellent way to see the "real-thing" , it was also interesting to return to class and listen to the different reactions from all of my classmates.

As a result of my experiences, I feel that all Political Science majors should be required to complete numerous out-of-class assignments and an internship, if possible. Even if the internship is not related to their particular field, working with different kinds of people in the public sector all working together on achieving the same goal in the end is such a great learning experience for someone studying Political Science. Politics cannot be accurately studied unless human nature and the interaction between people is also examined in actual institutional settings. Sometimes this is best illustrated not only through the use of a textbook, but rather from experiences one obtains on their own study throughout life.