The first few days of this week we were blessed to be taught on a subject near and dear to my own heart—politics and political thought. Feeling called to political arena in the future, it was a special treat to have three days focused on this subject. We were given Hunter Baker’s book Political Thought: A Students Guide and then were taught the following three days by Tim Echols, a politician and speaker from the greater Atlanta area. He is the founder of TeenPact and is now on the chairperson for the Georgia Public Service Commission. Our class learned a lot from his teaching and teaching style this week, but what I found most interesting during the week were the things that Baker taught in his book. After opening with the comparison of the world of political thought to the interactions of family, he went on the detail the three most influential political thinkers that have influenced our way of thought: Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes. During the Academy on Thursday afternoon we were able to dive even deeper into the schools of logic with Ed Bort. For those of you who do not know what “the Academy” is, it is a meeting we have on either Thursday or Friday during the normal class time block in which we discuss what has been taught to us in class or we dive deeper into a topic that wasn’t covered in class. These sessions are always educational and allow us as students to learn and listen to our peers as well as get a chance to focus on a subject the professor didn’t get to cover. I love this chance for our class to interact. It binds us together in a way that trust building exercises cannot. You see, for me, when I am in a class learning, my mind is expanding and the Academy give us a chance to talk about this and to relate to one another in an intellectual way. You can see people growing and changing and most of all how God is moving in their lives. That is one thing that is fantastic about this program. I am not just another student. To our staff and to my peers and now friends, I am an important part of this machine. I get to look around and see exactly what is going on in their lives and see how they make connections and relate things. I love this. So, relating it all back to this political science module, it was such a joy to learn more about a passion of mine in a way that positively highlighted the truth in political thought and the treasures to be learned in it.
Hannah Richards