I apologize for not posting over the past couple of weeks. I have just moved from Austin, TX to Huntington, NY in order to go to graduate school. I am working on a masters in political science at Stony Brook University. I have just completed my first week of classes and I am very excited about the rest of the semester.
This semester I am taking courses in the dynamics of public opinion, passionate politics, research methods and time series statistics. Dynamics of public opinion will be very interesting as it will go over both general public opinion but also individual psychological influences on opinion. During the semester we will investigate the effects of personality, knowledge and social groups on opinions about political issues. In passionate politics we will examine political involvement especially in protests, social movements and special interest groups. We will go over the role of emotions and group identity in political involvement. Furthermore we will look at electoral politics and the role of the internet / social media in politics. My research methods course will likely be very easy for me since I have already taken research methods, advanced research methods, epistemology and philosophy of social sciences. Though I look forward to learning more about qualitative approaches to research since ASU is a very quantitatively focused psychology department. Finally I am excited about time series statistics, yes I am a complete dork at times. But I have been working with time series for 6 1/2 years and I think the course will help me solidify the knowledge I gain at work into a cohesive whole.
Through out the semester I plan to post any relevant papers that I write. I believe that many will be of interest to my readers. I will also post some of the things that I read since y’all may enjoy them too.