i got straight a's!

Well, almost. Only an A- in stupid Ecological Issues. But still, good enough for a 3.92, my highest GPA since I don't know when. And it's enough to bring my cumulative GPA to 3.52. Hurray!

springtime

Beware the lack of segues. Well, I finally finished all my exams and graduation business: got my tickets, cap and gown (colossal rip-off, I might add), poli sci honors rope and medal, confirmed dinner reservations, and got my plane ticket home for April 30. Sectionals were really fun, if a little disappointing in the end, and the weather has been non-stop gorgeous for the past week. Everyone is checking weather.com obsessively for the weekend forecast and hoping beyond hope that it doesn't rain during the ceremony. Even, it turns out, Mary Sue Coleman. I went to Bar Louie for dollar burgers last night with Anita and Jacob and apparently Jacob had run into Mary Sue on the steps of the union and talked to her for about half an hour about a bunch of different things. She sounded like a nice lady. My knee is finally starting to feel good again. I ran about two miles yesterday and jumped rope today and it feels fine. Today I ran to the CCRB and back and jumped rope and lifted a bit for upper body. Still not ready for lower-body stuff. But whatever, it just feels great to be active again after two weeks of rest and ice. I'm pretty out of shape.

Speaking of ice, I'm a complete convert to ice baths now. I took one on Saturday and another on Sunday after two hot days of frisbee, and definitely felt the difference in the morning on the following days, especially in my lower legs and hips. On an unrelated note, my interviews with CHF continued: I talked to Barbara Jones, the director program support, on Monday afternoon and then emailed back and forth with Lucy about coming into the office to meet her and Barbara and at least one of the regional directors for whom I'd be working (if they hired me) on May 2 and 9 in the morning.

Tonight a big group is going to the Tigers game against Texas. Anita got something like 20 people together so we got half-price tickets. It should be pretty fun. I've never been to a Tigers game, and it's been a good while since I went to any baseball game. Mom and Dad get in on Thursday night and then everyone else pours in throughout the day Friday. It's all very exciting but right now I actually feel kind of out of it and scattered. Oh well, maybe a shower will make me feel better. And some Primo Levi. I bought A Tranquil Star on Monday and have been reading the stories one at a time. That's all for now, hopefully I'll be in a better mindset the next time I write something.

finals and interview and sectionals

Well, finals are officially upon us. Some of my friends are already finished! I'm not, by a long shot, although I did just turn in my first paper. Modernity and nationalism in Latin America. Good bye, History 348! I won't miss you for a second! Now, on to the next: Polisci 497. I'm about halfway through my final for that class. It's a take-home affair: Four identifications of things we studied this year (for example, the conference of Catholic bishops at Aparecida in 2007); a 2000-word essay on how changes in religion have influenced political change; and a second essay, also of 2000 words or so, on a topic of our choosing. I've finished the first two parts. For the third, I think I'm going to write about gender issues and religion in Latin America. We read a whole book about gender issues, a lot of which has to do with the role of churches as interest groups, so this shouldn't be too hard. The whole shebang is due on Friday; I'd like to get it done today. Also due on Friday is my final for Polisci 389. Here's the prompt:

Huang argues that the Chinese state thinks of local capitalists as an adversary. That is why it gives preference to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). (a) Is Huang right? (b) Under what conditions might one envisage the state in China treating local capitalists on the same footing as SOEs and FIEs?

Fun, right? Politics and economic development of Asia has been an awesome class.

In other news, this morning I finally had a job interview in which I felt like I had a chance. I think it went okay, although she seemed disappointed that I have no professional correspondence-writing experience. Also, I wish I'd given a better response to the question, "Why are you interested in international development?" Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom! Talking and thinking about ID gets my motor running, now I want to help DO some! I'm fascinated by every aspect of it! Hopefully I'm just being overly self-critical, but I don't know. Lucy (the interviewer) did say she was going to set up an interview, either by phone or in person after I get home, with the director of administration and program support. She also elaborated a bit on the position, which was helpful. It's apparently pretty fast-paced: a lot of phone time, a lot of writing, a lot of juggling the needs of different people. Not really office administration, more like logistical and technical support for people in the field. It would be such a cool way to learn the nuts and bolts of how an organization like CHF works. She also seemed enthusiastic about my desire to go to grad school in a couple of years, which is good. Guess they don't expect people to have this job for too long at a stretch.

Sectionals is this weekend. Forecast calls for showers and temperatures in the mid-60s, which sounds just peachy to me. Way better than last weekend. However, I jogged through some drills yesterday at practice and my knee is definitely hurting today. Ibuprofen and ice for the rest of the week. I hope it holds up, at least through Saturday! It would be so disappointing to get all the way through the year and spend the last tournament of my college career taking stats and yelling on the sidelines. Being hurt sucks. Either way, I'm going to have to hustle home on Saturday night so I get back in time for the Bobby McFerrin-Chick Corea-Jack DeJohnette show!

Last bit, and then I'm going to grab some lunch before digging into this gender issues paper: At noon on Monday, at the conclusion of my Ecological Issues exam, I will be done with my undergraduate career.

a quick note about "red-baiting"

A piece on Salon today really pissed me off. Apparently, Bill Kristol has been comparing Obama's statement about depressed rural people clinging to guns or intolerance to Marx's statement about religion being the opiate of the masses. Leaving aside the sheer ridiculousness of that comparison, which whoever the Salon writer was did a good job of, I'd like to point out one little detail. THE COLD WAR ENDED TWENTY YEARS AGO! COMMUNISM IS NOT A THREAT! SOCIALISM IS NOT A THREAT! THERE IS NO RED SCARE! GET OVER IT!

religion and politics

To take a break from the papers I'm writing on this subject (two of them, plus some IDs, make up my final exam for Religion and Politics in Latin America), I came across the Critic at Large article in this week's New Yorker about the history of religion and politics in the United States. It's a great article, not much of a book-by-book review (can't really tell whether the books reviewed are worthwhile or not), but a terrific and concise overview of the history of religious freedom in this country. Check it out.

Okay, back to work.

an update

Well, I just wrote a letter to Jack updating him a little on what's been going on in my life this year. It turned out to be a pretty decent blow-by-blow of the things that have been important to me this year outside the family. So, since I haven't written here in a while, I'm just going to post part of it.

Classes have been pretty good, particularly my poli sci ones. I had two really, really great professors last semester, and I'm taking another class with one of them now, about politics and economic development in Asia. Partially because of that class, and partially because of how freaking sick I am of US politics, I've come to be more and more interested in economic development in the rest of the world. It's so complicated and so difficult to do fairly and well, and I think I'd like to join the ranks of people who are trying to make sure that the people "over whom the wave of progress is about to roll" don't get screwed in the process. That'd be a quote from Barrington Moore, Jr., in case you're interested. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. No, I did not have to look it up. As you might be able to tell, I'm still a giant geek.

No real transition to this, but it's important: Having Vale here for a month over winter break and then into January was really wonderful. I love her a lot and even though we're far away from each other now, and even though we broke up, it's still nice to know that I can be in love with someone as great as she is and have her love me back just as much. We still talk every week or ten days, on Skype.

I've gotten more and more serious about ultimate frisbee this year. I love playing for magnUM Reserve (the new, improved Tenacious B), going to tournaments and bonding with the guys on the team, losing and winning and getting dirty and hurt and having fun anyway. And I've finally found the motivation I always needed to get me off my butt and training hard. I love running and lifting and doing plyometrics and throwing and even doing drills. The most important tournament of the year for us, Michigan Sectionals, is coming up next weekend, and I can't wait to see if we can qualify for Great Lakes Regionals. We
don't have a prayer of qualifying for nationals, but that's okay. It'd be great just to make it out of our section. I'll be done with magnUM at the end of the year, obviously, but I'm going to try out for some club teams back in DC. Not elite-level open (men's), because I'm not good enough (yet), but maybe a regionals-level team, or maybe, just maybe, an elite-level mixed (coed) club. That last would be pretty sweet.

Things have gone really well with our apartment. It's big and comfortable and I really like all my roommates. That was pretty much a given with Gabby, but I've gotten to know Jon and Andrew really well over the course of the year, too, and now they're friends that I'll have for a long time. One big influence all my roommates have had on me has been in the music department: I listen to a lot bigger a range than I used to, including some electronic stuff that I probably would have scoffed at before this year. And a lot of afrobeat and soul, that I probably would have loved before this year but had never really heard. I can't wait to listen to some of it with you.

The prospect of all my friends splitting up is one of the hardest things to imagine and stomach about graduating in less than three weeks (!!!!). It's funny how friendships change just based on who you're around; I've spent a lot of time this year with kids I barely knew before, just because they're close by. It'll be interesting to see who I remain closest with after I leave Ann Arbor.

Speaking of leaving, and going back to Silver Spring, one thing that's given me a lot of anxiety this semester is looking for jobs. It's pretty rough trying to get hired, without a master's degree, in the fields that interest me (see above). I've applied at a bunch of places and no dice, but over the past couple of weeks I've started to calm down about that. My boss is going to keep giving me work through May, and I'll be able to look for jobs once I'm back on the street in DC. Might end up just bartending or working at a restaurant for a while, and that's okay. More time for frisbee! And running! Well, after my knee heals up. (I got me some iliotibial band syndrome: runner's knee. It sucks.) And more time for finishing the strange book I've been reading in my (limited) free time. It's called The Third Policeman, and well, let me put it like this: Some of the characters refer to a really hard problem as a "pancake" and believe that over a person's lifetime, that person become more and more like their bicycle, just as that person's bicycle becomes more and more like them, to the point that the person can't stand still without leaning on something, and the bicycle starts to tool around of its own volition.

And, speaking of reading, I'd better get back to mine. I'm doing well in all my classes at the moment, but the home stretch is upon me and work is starting to pile up, including about a bajillion pages on nationalism in Latin America and China's economic boom to do for this week. Woohoo!

There you have it. And now, home to ice the knee and read until I fall asleep. Good night.