I've been asked by a number of people, both within and outside of the university community, why I chose the MAIS program. I feel like I've talked about it endlessly, but that's mostly been in face-to-face conversations with friends and family. The people who've been inquiring lately are people who I communicate with mostly at a distance (though, I have met all of them in the flesh at least once).

For those within the AU community, I can skip most of the stuff where I explain what MAIS is (or, try to explain it; I'll admit that I'm not 100% sure what this whole "integrated studies" thing is all about--I have a good sense, but it seems like I won't know with any degree of certainty until I'm in my first course and exploring what it all means) and get to the why of it.

I have, in fact, written a bit about it already when I discussed plotting a course for my degree.

Basically, I'm interested in exploring some questions about community. In particular, I'm interested in exploring and understanding why people who are otherwise very active and political within their community don't go out and vote. Why is the activist voice so loud on the street but often silent within the voting booth?

But, I think the thing about MAIS that makes it really interesting and exciting for me is the ability to approach these questions using tools and ideas from multiple disciplines and synthesizing them into a new approach. If I was to tackle these questions at a different university, I'd likely be guided toward political science or sociology. With MAIS, I can look at methologies from those disciplines as well as many others that may prove relevant: history, psychology, urban design, and so on.

It's the inter-/multi-disciplinary approach(es) that make MAIS exciting for me. I could explore the questions and research that I'm interested in through other schools and other Masters programs, but only the MAIS program will allow me to take a more holistic approach. And I feel that this approach will give a fuller, broader, and more interesting (if not more accurate) insight into the questions that I am interested in exploring as a graduate student.