This Political Science journey has been something else. This semester alone has been one for the books. The one and only Political Science class I took this semester was Intro to Public Policy. There was a multitude of things I took away from this class. In this essay, I am going to explore the entire semester of being in Public Policy. I plan on going through the good, the bad, and the ugly, so buckle up!
To begin, I’d like to start with my expectations from this class coming into the semester. Just the name “Public Policy” gives off a boring vibe. It sounds like something overly complicated, that old people talk about in their spare time while playing checkers at the retirement home. Rightfully so, I figured this was going to be nothing but …show more content…
In week one we were partnered up in groups according to interest. My particular interest was civil rights. Once we were put into groups we developed an eight week plan to effectively implement a policy. Prior to actually putting the policy together, my thought process was simple and precise. I wanted to tap on a civil rights issue dealing with race that could make everything equal for everyone and just get it over with right there. I was in for quite a shock. Things weren’t that simple, because we were working in groups we had to all agree on a subject. That particular area for us was an issue with military wives in the workplace. Once we found a subject, we had to find what particular area of that subject we were going to attack. The easier part of that was checking previous policy in that area to see if there had already been some adjustments made in this area. If so, it made our job a lot easier. We also had to weigh out the pros and cons of our own policy, in a way playing Devil’s advocate just to insure the solidarity of our policy. This meant sending our policy through a series of checks and balances. We had to ensure that our policy did not infringe on the rights of the citizens or …show more content…
In the process of trying to answer the big questions of the interest groups, we realized the one key element of public policy. It was in fact true that some issues cannot be resolved. It was like searching for an imaginary needle in a haystack, it just did not exist. Once we realized that, we could only go off of the things we knew for sure. There was always the lingering thought of fairness. How could something be classified as fair if one group of people are hurt by it? These are the types of questions that come to mind when evaluating the questions of the people. Then you realize another key element of public policy. There will never be a policy that is completely fair. You may get really close, but it is just the way policy works. When you’re dealing with the development of policy you have to factor in everyone. With those two elements in mind, we were able to do a better evaluation of the questions we were asked during our first
To begin, I’d like to start with my expectations from this class coming into the semester. Just the name “Public Policy” gives off a boring vibe. It sounds like something overly complicated, that old people talk about in their spare time while playing checkers at the retirement home. Rightfully so, I figured this was going to be nothing but …show more content…
In week one we were partnered up in groups according to interest. My particular interest was civil rights. Once we were put into groups we developed an eight week plan to effectively implement a policy. Prior to actually putting the policy together, my thought process was simple and precise. I wanted to tap on a civil rights issue dealing with race that could make everything equal for everyone and just get it over with right there. I was in for quite a shock. Things weren’t that simple, because we were working in groups we had to all agree on a subject. That particular area for us was an issue with military wives in the workplace. Once we found a subject, we had to find what particular area of that subject we were going to attack. The easier part of that was checking previous policy in that area to see if there had already been some adjustments made in this area. If so, it made our job a lot easier. We also had to weigh out the pros and cons of our own policy, in a way playing Devil’s advocate just to insure the solidarity of our policy. This meant sending our policy through a series of checks and balances. We had to ensure that our policy did not infringe on the rights of the citizens or …show more content…
In the process of trying to answer the big questions of the interest groups, we realized the one key element of public policy. It was in fact true that some issues cannot be resolved. It was like searching for an imaginary needle in a haystack, it just did not exist. Once we realized that, we could only go off of the things we knew for sure. There was always the lingering thought of fairness. How could something be classified as fair if one group of people are hurt by it? These are the types of questions that come to mind when evaluating the questions of the people. Then you realize another key element of public policy. There will never be a policy that is completely fair. You may get really close, but it is just the way policy works. When you’re dealing with the development of policy you have to factor in everyone. With those two elements in mind, we were able to do a better evaluation of the questions we were asked during our first