Hi again everyone! I am writing about my experiences with the online courses that The George Washington University offers during the summer. This is probably of interest to those of you who may have fallen behind on one or two requirements or are just interested in getting ahead!

GW offers some of the same courses that they offer during the regular school year throughout the summer online.  They are mostly six-week courses (the summer is divided into two sessions of six weeks each) and are all worth their usual credit amounts, be it 3 or 4 credits. They also fulfill the same requirements that they would during the regular school year.  These courses,  run mostly through your online Blackboard portal, can be a great way to take courses that you know will count for college credit while satisfying your GW major requirements as well – all while balancing a job and/or other summer activities! You don’t need to be on campus, in D.C., or even in the United States to take these courses – so long as you have access to the internet, you are good to go.

Professors are very available to talk via email and usually respond quite quickly. One heads up though is that the content of these courses are the same as when regularly offered at GW, so still cover the same amount of material but in just six weeks during the summer.  This means that the courses do require a fair bit of reading and time, but I have found that they are really worth it.

I took two courses online last summer and I am now in my second online course again this summer. Last summer I took ENGL 081 W – Intro to Creative Writing and REL 120 – Religions Wage Peace. Both of these courses counted towards my Humanities and Creative Arts requirements and I was able take these courses while having an internship at the same time! This summer I am at the same internship while balancing two more courses. These are HIST 182 – US Diplomatic History and GEOG 127 – Population Geography. So far I have really enjoyed my courses and am very satisfied with my decision to take them online during the summer.

If you are interested in learning more about what GW has to offer for summer online courses or anything else related to the summer take a look at their website

Elizabeth is a rising junior majoring in International Affairs with a concentration in Contemporary Cultures and Societies.  She is also pursuing a second major in Philosophy-Public Affairs and a minor in Applied Ethics.

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• Need Help Balancing Your Schedule?

By Elizabeth Gerke

I am currently taking a course called Japanese Culture Through Film (JAPN 162) and I just wanted to let you guys know about it. We watch films made in Japan and discuss cultural themes presented through them. Topics include history, society, and anthropology such as time periods, gangs, traditions and modern aspects of life. Last semester I took a similar course called Chinese Culture Through Film and I also loved it. I highly recommend a course like these to help balance out your schedule, because they are usually offered at night and meet once a week for two and a half hours (most of the films are feature-length after all). Balancing out your schedule can really help with fitting in internships and other job opportunities. I have really enjoyed these courses and I hope this recommendation helps some of you out with your course options!

Elizabeth is a sophomore majoring in International Affairs with a concentration in Contemporary Cultures and Societies.  She is also pursuing a second major in Philosophy-Public Affairs and a minor in Applied Ethics.

Hi! My name is Elizabeth Gerke and I am a sophomore majoring in International Affairs with a concentration in Contemporary Cultures and Societies.  I am also majoring in Philosophy-Public Affairs and minoring in Applied Ethics.  I have recently joined the peer advising team here at the Elliott School and I love it.  I hope that my take on how to pick an International Affairs concentration will be helpful and stress-relieving!

The first thing that I recommend is to become familiar with the options available to you as an Elliott School student. The concentrations are listed online at the Elliott School website under the International Affairs major. The potential concentrations are divided into two groups: functional and regional. Regional group concentrations focus on geographic areas of the world and functional group concentrations focus on specific themes of international affairs that students can make their area of expertise.

From here you can decide if you want to focus in a world region or a functional group.  Are you especially interested in Latin America, the Middle East or Asia?  Africa and Europe/Eurasia are also potential concentrations here. If you can’t seem to decide on one portion of the world (or you would just prefer not to), then you should consider the functional group concentrations. These include Conflict & Security, International Economics, International Politics, Global Public Health and my concentration: Contemporary Cultures and Societies. For the full list of functional group concentrations please take a look at the website.

Each concentration requires that you take five courses out of those listed. Some concentrations have prerequisites recommended at the beginning of the course list as they are needed for many of the other courses listed below.  For your concentration to be considered complete, you must take courses from at least 2 different departments. One of the five courses that you take may be double-counted between your major and concentration requirements. Your concentration must be declared using the Group Concentration Form no later than the first semester of your junior year. This means that if you are considering studying abroad during your junior year, you should consider declaring your concentration your sophomore year. The form is simple to fill out and only takes about ten minutes.

I hope this guide to picking a concentration was helpful for you! If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask a peer advisor at esiapeer@gmail.com.

Elizabeth is a sophomore majoring in International Affairs with a concentration in Contemporary Cultures and Societies.  She is also pursuing a second major in Philosophy-Public Affairs and a minor in Applied Ethics.