[Sunshine Hillygus] - Even if you find yourself feeling like
you are a 'content expert,'
that doesn't mean that you
don't have a lot to learn
about collecting data, and the
most important thing to know
is probably what you don't know.
(slow piano music)
[Jan Vogler] - I should say the
substantive effect is similar
across all of this.
[Edmund Malesky] - Even in this highly
rigorous model, right,
the coefficient stays relatively the same.
[Cameron Arnzen] - What really attracted
me to the Duke Department
of Political Science was
that the masters students
are immersed in classes
alongside the PhD students.
We're mentored the same,
we're treated the same,
and I really wanted the opportunity
to be able to explore academia.
[Taylor Vincent] - I really entered the
program wanting to learn more
about peace negotiations and agreements
and conflict resolution,
and while I'm still really interested
in those things,
my course work has given me
the opportunity to learn more
about different aspects
of political science.
And so now, I've really
started to gravitate towards
political institutions
and democratization.
[Robert Allred] - I never had a background in
political science coursework
and I wanted to get some exposure to it
as well as getting the methods,
training the program offers.
[Taylor Vincent] - I use to have this huge aversion to math
but now I'm really interested
in quantitative methods.
So I really wanna know
more about R, and coding,
and using regression to
understand things and processes.
[Robert Allred] - I didn't expect to be treated the same
as all other grad students.
I expected the PhDs to be
given some favorability
but in reality in my coursework,
that wasn't the case.
Professors just treated you just
like any other PhD students
which is really nice.
I felt that every conversation
we had in my opinion
was appreciated.
I really enjoyed that.
My writing skills have gotten a lot better
and I expected them to
pay off in the long run.
[Melanie Manion] - I have to highlight these two papers
are in areas on topics
where I tell a student,
if a student comes and says, "I wanna work on..."
I say, "Choose another topic."
because it's so hard to
do something systematic
as you have done, as
each of you have done.
[Cameron Arnzen] - Faculty genuinely care about you here.
They're very immersed in how you're doing.
"Are you taking care of yourself?"
"How is the homework coming?"
Yesterday, literally, just
walking here from my car.
I walked past two faculty, and
they both checked in on me.
"We have month left, how is it going?"
"How is your homework coming?"
Being able to have that kind of net, that safety net,
and people who care about
you and actually care
about how you're doing,
not just academically
but holistically is valuable,
and I think that's
probably what helps people
get through here
but also get through
here very successfully.
[Taylor Vincent] - I personally worked with
a couple of professors to do
different projects.
[Cameron Arnzen] - Day to day life in
the MA program is busy.
It's mostly a juggle trying
to figure out whether
I need coffee or wine
but I spend pretty much
most of the time just doing
home, going over readings
and getting ready for class.
Going to class and then
resetting for the next week
all while juggling the
overarching projects
that are coming up to the final semester,
but, of course, scattered throughout there
You meet a lot of people.
You meet a lot of different people;
and you get to interact with your friends
and kinda share the struggles together,
and it has been busy so far
but I'm really enjoying it.
[John Aldrich] - A source of interesting
and important problems
is not just what will
move the research frontier
in political science,
that's an important thing
but also will help us
understand the world better.
Will help not academics
but we as human beings.
 
