Financial Aid Progress

Hey everyone!

I am still working on getting enough money to travel to Greece this summer. No fears, the money will come! I am in the process of applying for the Hall Family Grant through William Jewell. It is a grant solely for Jewell students who are studying abroad during the summer months, so there is a relatively small pool. The application is due in a couple days on March 1, so I am finalizing my application these next couple days. I will find out about this grant by April 1...fingers crossed!

The grant has been generous in the past, so I am hopeful. One of my best friends at Jewell and my fraternity brother, Roy Abdo, attended the program last summer. He was able to get the entire program paid for through scholarships from IIPES and the Hall Grant. We are very similar in our studies and hopeful career paths, among other things: we are both Greek Orthodox and both very proud of our heritages (he was born and raised in Lebanon before moving to America in the Fall of 2006). He has nothing but great things to say about IIPES. It was actually him who originally introduced me to the program, so I am in debt to him for that. Thanks buddy.

I have also decided to begin to post essays from my studies this semester that have to do with conflict resolution in the Middle East. I am taking a class on how War and Peace is made in the modern era. Of course, a large part of both has to do with learning about and dealing with radical Islam. I have been reading texts that are very, very interesting: Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 and Robert Pape's Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. What is commonly concluded when one begins to study Islam and its relation to terrorism is that the Muslim religion as we know it is severely misunderstood. This misunderstanding is the base problem of why we are in all likelyhood losing the "War on Terror". I have a theory about that "War", which, as I told one of my professors, will likely form the bulk of a Master's Thesis someday. I will hopefully write an essay on the subject by the end of the semester, but I'm still working through the basic concepts of the theory. More to come on that in the future.

I have realized that you must have a registered google.com account to post a reply...sorry for that. If you would like to discuss any of my blog posts without subscribing to a google account, I'd love to hear from you. E-mail me at chambersa@william.jewell.edu.

Adios