My First Day of Class

7/24(Thu)
Today was my first day of class. My class is held at from 2:20 p.m. to 4:50 from Monday through Thursday. The instructor wraped up today's lecture earlier than the normal time.
My instructor is Korean and in PhD course in Political Science.

By the way, he distributed a sheet of syllabus and carefully explained it. According to the syllabus, I have midtem exam on 7 August, final exam on 21 August, and pop-up quiz. Pop-up quiz is going to be like what is the argument of Kant or what is the argument of Jervis. He told us that it is easy to solve if we read the articles in the textbook.

Then, let me write about today's content. After we looked over the syllabus, we thought about International Relations(IR), theory, and the step for theorizing. First, what is IR? Before answering for the question, the instructor gave us an idea that this course 'Introduction to IR' is for answering WHY do things happen the way they happen in that way. Then, he explained us that IR is the scientific study of the interaction of people or states across state borders. In this sentence, the word 'the interaction' makes a difference between IR and comparative politics. Second, the instructor gave us a question about what is a theory. After a few second, two students in a class suggested that it is an explanation or an educated guess. As they suggested, the instructor told us that theory is an attempt to find general and causal explanation.

Third, what was most interesting topic was studying the step for theorizing. Here, he introduced us the term 'Dependent Variable' and 'Independent Variable.' The first thing for us to theorize about a phenomenon is finding a puzzle, reserch question. For example, let's think about the puzzle of WHY the percentage of those who are saying the U.S is ready to have Black president is rising. In this puzzle, dependent variable is the rising persentage of people who are supporting for black president. During class, the students examined what independent variable is. Some guesses were raised. For instance, rising gas price, dislike of the other candidates, global influence, generation change, media, or good looking.

The important thing of theory is defining independent valiable. It is because the world would be disaster if we failed to define the correct independent variable. In short, independent variable is like the cause of the happening or accident. If we misdefined the cause in the process of solving the happening or accident, we could bring another disaster to the world.

That is all about today's class. I have no class on Friday. So, I will spend time preparing for the next class on Monday.

Misaki