Senior Journal #1

This summer I took course in Washington DC that was part of the NSLC (National Student Leadership Conference). The course itself was approximately two weeks long, and while I was there I learned about the fundamentals of National Security as well as the different Government agencies that work together protect our country. Not only did I hear lectures from some highly distinguished members of our Government, I also had the opportunity to take a tour of many different government agencies themselves. I went to places such as the Pentagon and CIA headquarters and was able to get an interesting but controlled view of how these different factions work.

This entire conference helped me a lot with understanding the steps taken for National security, as well as politics in general. I'll admit that I arrived rather nervous mainly due to the fact that I didn't know much about what the conference was based on. As time progressed however, it became more apparent to me that I wasn't alone in this situation... after all, at the end of the day this whole was conference was a learning experience. This isn't to say that there weren't kids that seemed to be experts on everything that were learning about, but the speeches that were given were accessible to people like me, and I never truly seemed to be in over my head with anything.

Another cool aspect of the conference was the mock National Security Council meetings. After we had learned a decent amount about how the National Security Council operates, we were assigned to new groups (which meant new people that I hadn't met before) and formed our own National Security Council. In these smaller groups, we each had our own roles in and had to perform our own responsibilities under a mock crisis-situation. In these scenarios, the sky was the limit and we were allowed to perform any courses of action we deemed necessary as long as we decided on things as a collective. This was done to ensure realism, and after we had made a decision, we would learn about the consequences of that decision the next day on a National or sometimes even global scale. Near the end of the Conference, all the NSC groups convened and shared their successes and failures.

Overall, the conference I attended helped me immensely in understanding the immensely confusing language that is politics. The fact that this entire program was “kid-oriented” allowed me to get a good grasp on what they were teaching us. I intend to use all the knowledge I gained over the summer as well as the knowledge I'm still gaining right now to help me with my up and coming project.