Weird title, I know. I had a Spanish teacher in high school who used to mock students who mispronounced words with the phase "accento on the wrong syll-AH-ble." For whatever reason, it stuck with me. So there you go. This post is about syllabuses only tangentially. It's more about reading.
One of the things I really like about the early weeks of every semester is that there is time! Time to catch up with friends you haven't seen in a while (as one of my fellow bloggers recently reminded us), time to exercise, time to cook...but I relish the opportunity to take the time to read things I wouldn't later on, when my scarce free time is allocated to eating and sleeping.
Right now I'm reading David Kilcullen's "Counterinsurgency", both a great theoretical treatment and an effective empirical account of insurgency in the modern period and how to fight it. It's particularly fascinating reading because I'm interested mostly in what are sometimes called "high-end" conflicts, or wars between states. It's not assigned reading for class, but I'd highly recommend it to anyone.
For any current or prospective students looking to get the most out of scarce "brain time", never undervalue reading what you think is interesting for its own sake. Today I found something on the sources of military doctrine that makes perfect sense when combined with things I learned about bureaucratic organizations in a class last semester.
A side note about which texts to buy and which to avoid--steer well clear of anything introductory-sounding, especially for higher level classes. Collections or anthologies of essays are usually great, though: I have one on U.S. defense policy (our national strategy) that I'm working through now for class, and another on civil or low-level warfare and its causes I got for a course last year and have been meaning to get back to. It probably won't happen this semester, but as I love to remind people, "that's life."
--Adam
Questions? Comments? Want to waken the opinion beast from its age-long slumber? Let me know at ash1290@gwmail.gwu.edu.
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