Election observers needed!

VERY short notice for this one I'm afraid: RC

"The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and SILBA are currently looking for 20 local election observers to participate in the monitoring of the upcoming elections on October 23rd in Bulgaria.

URGENT CALL FOR ELECTION OBSERVERS
The Support Initiative for Liberty and Democracy (SILBA) is a Danish NGO, which works to support democracy efforts in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. We will be deploying a mission of electoral observers to monitor the Bulgarian national and local elections to take place on October 23rd. We will be working together with the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee to carry out the mission. We are looking to gather a group of 10-20 observers from Bulgaria that will accompany the Danish participants.

October 21-23
Who can apply: Anyone interested in participating, preferably a student or someone with a background in journalism, law, political science or sociology; Must speak both Bulgarian and English; The local participants do not need to have experience of election observation. We will provide any training they need.

How to apply:
Interested applicants should send a CV with a short introduction about yourself and why you would like to participate to svetla.baeva@gmail.com. Please apply latest by Tuesday, October 18. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to send inquiries to above mentioned email address.
Costs: SILBA will cover all costs for for local participants including travel and meal during the day. "

Internship opportunity with Transitions

An internship opportunity that some might want to check out. Thanks to Prof. Castle for spotting this. BP

Transitions www.tol.org is looking for editorial interns with an interest in online journalism and international reporting.

They will conduct research for the editors, help find photos for stories, publish stories on our content management system, assist with multimedia productions, help write and research grant proposals, and find suitable articles from other outlets for Transitions to reprint, among other duties. They will also have an opportunity to edit and write for us, depending on their skills and inclination. We have two ideal candidates:

One is a native English speaker, preferably with some knowledge of a primary language in Transitions coverage regions, such as Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, or Albanian. He or she will have some experience with journalistic writing, probably with a college or university newspaper or magazine.

The other is a native Russian speaker able to translate texts into English and conduct research in Russian, preferably familiar with the norms of Western-style journalism.

The interns need not be located in Prague, but they must have reliable broadband access, be able to commit a regular block of time to the work, and be willing to use Skype while on the job. Please send a CV and one sample of your work, if applicable, to editorial@tol.org. Only those candidates selected for an interview will be notified. These are not paying positions.

Model EU in Belgrade

Short notice, but still time to apply (note there is a 165 euro fee which doesn't include transport to/from Belgrade). RC
10th – 13th November 2011

Belgrade Model European Union (BEUM) is a project created by a group of students gathered under non-governmental organization of Student Association BEUM and strongly supported by Faculty of Economics, Finance and Administration (FEFA) from Belgrade. BEUM 2011 will organize simulation of 3 Institutions: European Council, European Parliament and Council of the EU (former Council of Ministers). The Council of the EU and the European Parliament will share topics in order to simulate the real co-decision process.

Besides applying for delegate in mentioned institutions, you can also apply for the role of Journalist (all committees) and the role of Lobbyist (European Parliament and Council of the EU).

Applications are open until 10th October. For detailed information visit: www.beum.org

Clinton Global Initiative University

Folks,

This opportunity to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative University was suggested by a department alum. If you are interested, check out their website. BP

UK's Fast Stream and POS & EUR

On more than a few occasions, I bother students by talking about how a successful professional needs to: see well, analyze well, write well, communicate well, organize well, and meet well.

Recently, the UK government began a program called Fast Stream to bring talented persons into the civil service. This is from the website:

What are we looking for?
There is no such thing as a typical Fast Streamer. Successful candidates come from a diverse range of backgrounds, and may have any kind of degree. There are, however, some key competencies that we look for in all our Fast Streamers.

You’ll have to take the lead on decision-making based on evidence, and handle the pressure and responsibility that comes with it. This means being proactive and thinking on your feet. Sitting on the fence is not an option.

You’ll be working with some of the brightest and most talented people in the country. It’s important that you all get the best out of each other, building trust, developing relationships and respecting each person’s perspective.

The ability to make an impact is essential. We look for people who are lucid, persuasive, confident and articulate. Whether it’s a high-level meeting, a large presentation or a conversation with a disgruntled customer, you must be able to express yourself and defend your position clearly and succinctly.

Being able to think flexibly, innovatively and resourcefully is also important, particularly as you may be asked to consider doing something new, or to investigate how things can be done more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Not everything you do will be headline news: it’s important to focus as much on the smaller details as on the big-picture issues.

Take a look at that list again. One’s degree can be important, but what sets someone apart in the professional world will not be a specific degree or a specific major. Instead, it will be additional qualities.

What does this mean for you here in the POS or EUR programs at AUBG? Well, it means that going to class and just putting forth the minimum needed to get through a course and then through the major will eventually get you a degree. However, your degree is not your final goal unless you plan on retiring at 21.

Your degree, by itself, will mean very little for your real future if you don’t have these other qualities. But they don’t develop themselves. To build a body, one has to work out; to develop these qualities one has to exercise them. But it takes a mind shift in order to begin developing them.

When writing a paper for a class, for example, think about it as more than a requirement to get a grade for that class. Instead, consider that paper as an exercise to hone the writing skills that will give you a professional advantage in the future. Doing a slack job or writing the paper at the last minute is missing an opportunity to develop—like doing only five minutes of cardio exercise or using a one-quarter kilo dumbbell. You can say officially that you’ve worked out, but you know truly that you haven’t.

The classroom will help develop some of these qualities, but extracurricular activities that require you to meet, organize, participate, and communicate are additional ways to develop. Think of them as cross training for your professional life. BP

Back to the future?

A BBC news story describes a curious project at the University of Illinois’ Institute for Computing and the Humanities. Researchers there fed 100 million articles from various sources into a supercomputer called Nautilus. It analyzed their overall mood (looking for keywords like “terrible” and “nice”) and the locations that were mentioned. On the basis of such “automated sentiment mining” and “geocoding,” Nautilus was able to predict the recent revolution in Egypt and to pinpoint roughly Osama Bin Laden’s location in Pakistan. The main author of the study, a specialist in content analysis, believes the supercomputer did a better job than the scores of human experts who were trying to make similar assessments. There is just one slight problem with his claim. Nautilus made those predictions retroactively, after Hosni Mubarak had been overthrown and Bin Laden had been killed. The researcher is confident, though, that Nautilus “could easily be adapted to work in real time” and make real predictions about future events. So, in a few years decision makers will no longer be surprised by political earthquakes, market crashes, or any other similar accidents. IS

Smart and smarter

Welcome back everyone. As everyone knows, add-drop week can sometimes confront you with some pretty tough choices. The New York Times Magazine recently carried an article offering some precious advice on how to make such decisions so you won’t come to regret them a few days later. The basic idea is that the human brain can easily malfunction when it is overloaded with too many decisions without sufficient rest and nutrition. These decisions include not only important stuff (like choosing between a POS and an ECO course which have an irritating time conflict), but also many trivial choices (“Should I go to that birthday party tonight?”), efforts to resist all sorts of temptations or to filter out trivial information, etc. The bottom line is: important decisions are best taken when your brain is well rested and fed – preferably after a good night’s sleep or a nap, and a healthy snack. IS

Welcome...

Hey Folks,

Welcome to the new blog for the Department of Politics and European Studies at the American University in Bulgaria.

We hope to use this blog to provide better communication between everyone interested in POS and EUR happenings on campus.