My experience here at Queen's as an MA student
has been amazing.
The ability to build relationships with many
of the professors that I've had.
The studies here in the Political Studies
department I think have just, blown my mind.
We have a close working relationship with
our graduate students, and as a faculty we
collaborate often on projects, and that kind
of collaboration spills over with our graduate
student work.
So it's a great environment in which to learn,
in which to work, and in which to thrive.
My favourite thing about our department is
our supervisor capacity.
So, we do a really good job of matching students
with potential supervisors, who are not only
experts in the field, but really care about
the student as both a person and as an academic,
so professionally and personally.
Queen's is a very research intensive university,
and you'll see within this department our
faculty members have a plethora of different
research projects that they can involve graduate
students in.
This is important not just to learn about
different topics that are related to important
debates in the field, but also for transferable
skills, to solidify your understanding of
concepts, research methods, and you get better
at communicating your research findings to
different types of audiences.
Being a TA is such a great part of the MA/PhD
experience at Queen's.
When you are a TA you just have a tutorial,
so you only have about 30 or so students,
so you really get to know the students one-on-one,
and it really helps you develop your own skills
and communicating your ideas, and you learn
so much from your students.
We have sort of our Political Studies Graduate
Student Association, it brings graduate students
together, to play trivia, to connect, to exchange
interests.
Going to play softball, a lot of it's run
by our PhD students who are amazing.
So I think there's a space where you can really
get together not only on the academic side
but also the personal side to really connect
with folks.
Kingston is a great place to study politics
because we have the Royal Military College,
Kingston was the site of the first capital
of Canada, it is steeped in history, and there's
lots of opportunities to learn not only Canadian
politics, which is the area I teach, but also
the connection between international affairs
and comparative politics and political theory.
So it affords itself a wonderful environment
in which to learn and which to play and which
to study.
