Throughout this year, I have been doing research on “Gender in the 2016 Presidential Campaign” with a specific focus on how Presidential Candidates use gendered rhetoric and gendered issues as a tool to appeal to female voters and as a weapon against Hillary Clinton. Presenters had to check in 9:00-9:30am but the morning session for which I was scheduled didn’t start until 10:30am. Since my partner and I got there around 9:00am, I had some time to kill. We stopped at Starbucks for a $2 cold brew special and got bagels at the Symposium, courtesy of the Aresty Program.
By the time the morning session began and I had to present, I had consumed three cups of coffee and I was probably about 90% caffeine. Slightly jittery but full of energy, it was easy to present on the work that my partner and I had been doing for nearly 9 months.
Since my research was so focused on recent events, many people were interested in talking to us. There was one judge who was talking to us for about half an hour about the Presidential Campaign. Unfortunately, they wanted to talk about the economy and the candidates’ economic policies rather than our research on gender. But many people were interested in our opinions of the candidates, especially Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and how the use of gender might affect their campaigns. After researching the subject for so long, it was interesting to see what other people thought about the use of gender in the presidential primaries.
Before coming to Rutgers, I wouldn’t have thought that, as a Political Science major, I could do research related to my major but Aresty has allowed me to meet great people and learn more about a topic that interests me while contributing to a project that has been going on for two years. Overall, being a part of the Aresty Research program and being part of this particular research team has been an amazing experience.