Back from break, and still unable to get much done.
I applied for five different summer jobs/internships. I could wind up in Boston, D.C., or I could live at home for another summer & commute to the city. All of this depends on if I get accepted to any of the new places I applied, of course. I don’t hold any illusions about publishing and such, but there’s a million things I could see myself doing within that field. It’s far more appealing to me than becoming a D.C. bureaucrat.
Am I crazy and immature for straying off my well-thought-out, responsible path? I’m serious. Someone really needs to tell me if I am, because I truly don’t know. I won’t get mad! Am I awful for disappearing for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon to write? (When I have an Honors Research paper to write…) And does that sound incredibly flaky?
I saw Brent & Ray last night (“You boys are impossible”/ “Impossibly witty!”)
Truly. If I hadn’t become friends with them (in 6th grade, we were such nerds…little has changed), I could have been normal, and popular. Actually, that’s a total lie. I would not trade “The Loser” status; it gave me a permanent dislike of the female species, an interest in observing social dynamics and an obsession with “IT” by Stephen King. According to Ray, I am Elaine Benes (from Seinfeld). According to Brent, I’m judgemental.
Kevin (aka “Coolest Person of 03’) is getting all optimistic on regime change. I am maintaining my position that Republicans, much like dolphins, are tricky bastards, and it doesn’t really matter what Kerry does, because it is impossible for Bush to lose the election. Although I am rather impessed by the ability of the Kerry campaign, thus far, to ward off attacks.
It will be an exciting time to be in Washington this summer. Too bad I don’t want to go.
Friday night, I was lucky enough to have a EuroSim reunion with some of the coolest Model EU people ever. Like plenary sessions, I kept track of all the brilliance.
So Model EU was not what I expected, but in the end, it turned out okay. The Interior Ministers didn’t really have to tackle anything controversial, so my meetings were kind of unexciting. The guy next to me spent the time making up cheesy pick-up lines with EuroSim references., most of which were funny, but I don’t remember them. (My favorite: Hey baby, can I be the minister of your interior?)
There were also a lot of stupid people at Eurosim, all of them Americans. The European students there were so well prepared and knew the material so much better (granted, most of them were law students). Unfortunately, a lot of delegations were unprepared, and were representing their own opinions, rather then the real opinion of the country, and that was screwing a lot of things up.
The Slovakian delegation was particularly annoying. After doing a 25 page paper on Slovakia in 2 days and killing myself researching it, and being in a really bitchy mood about it, my opinion of Slovakia was already quite low. Now, because their delegation was annoying, I have decided we should definitely bomb Slovakia.
But yeah. This international relations stuff…this is really what I want to do with my life. Go to law school and get a dual degree (Juris Doctorate and MA in International Affairs), spend my time arguing with people from other countries. Europeans are so much better educated than Americans – they know all about our primaries and made fun of Homeland Security and hate George Bush. What do we know about any of their governments, really? It’s kind of depressing. But I met a lot of interesting people, and had more intelligent conversations in this past week then I’ve had in the past year, or more, probably. It’s really great to met people who are interested in the same areas that I am.
In addition, I went out to dinner with a bunch of people on Sunday night, and we all had completely different opinions about so many things, and yet we managed to have a very civilized and interested discussion on a variety of topics (abortion, the Iraq war, the EU, socialism, Republicans, presidents, Jon Stewart being hot). It was wonderful to be able to disagree with people and still feel like your opinion is respected – that is certainly not something you find at Skidmore.
I’m back from Eurosim (Model EU) and Amsterdam and lots to tell and rant about, because I met a lot of interesting people and had intelligent conversations with others who are into international relations. It was very dorky, and fun. I lived in a Bungalow for a few days, with goats and roosters right outdoors. I am too out of it to write it all down right now, because it is deserving of much time or something.
So for now, just two conclusions
1) I was right about Slovakia when I was writing my Eastern Europe paper; it is a stupid country! We should bomb them!
2) There is something about putting a bunch of kids on a bus, and going some place semi educational (in this case, NATO, in Brussels) that makes you feel like you’re on a middle school feild trip. Except instead of bringing lots of candy for the bus ride, you bring wine. I like feild trips with wine a lot better
Considering I’m back in the world of academia I should have something intelligent, thoughtful, and perhaps deep to say, but I don’t. This is quickly turning from a political rants journal to a regular live journal, although I’m not spilling out any deep dark secrets (sorry profile pirates). Speaking of pirates, someone drew a really cool pirate ship on our transfer mural in Moore.
Transfers! I’ll talk about transfers.
So yeah.
Running transfer orientation went really well. We have a good group, who seem to ‘mesh’ well. They actually came to our community service event (ours was painting a mural, we were lucky…most freshman got stuck raking leaves, cleaning up trash and painting trees ((what the hell is painting trees anyway))). There’s no way to say “welcome” like “Hi, its your second day here! Guess what you’re doing!?! Picking up trash because the college is broke and can’t pay someone to do it! So we’re going to dress it up like a community service project, even though its doing nothing for the community!” But I digress.
Anyway, mural painting with the transfers was lots of fun, and then most of them came to our house on Monday night, and our living room was overflowing with people. We kept them seperated from the freshman for the most part, because they know how to go to college, and we didn’t like all the stupid frosh-events they had us do when we transferred. So yay for our successful transfer orientation.
Hm. I’m not even going to try to bullshit on why this is political.
It’s Friday late morning and I have class today…Class on Friday is an outrage, especially for a former Hampshire student. But its just IA 101, so its easy and not until after 12, so if I suddenly become a social butterfly this semester I can go out on Thursday nights. But that probably won’t happen.
So I’ve been in Europe for seven weeks, and have had no idea whats going on in the world, due to lack of TV, internet access, and general craziness of living a life of dark room time, bargaining in markets, and bar hopping. So I don’t really have much to have an opinion on
So yeah
It’s nearly the end of the semester, classes end in a week and I have tons of papers to do and no motivation to do them. Yay, run on sentences.
It’s really odd to believe the year is ending, especially when I associate the end of school with warm weather, and it’s going to snow tomorrow. Stupid upstate New York…in 3 weeks I’ll be in Florence where the weather will be warm. I should be really excited, but I’m not yet because of all the bureaucratic stuff I still have to do before I leave. Plus I’m going to be gone for 6+ weeks and will really miss Ryan, because we’ve never gone longer then 3 weeks without seeing each other (and usually it’s a lot less than that) and diner trips with Brenty, and Jersey, even though it’s the same old same old at home. I still want to take a drive on the Pulaski Skyway and witness the strangely beautiful view before I trade in smog and turnpikes and factories and cars for villas and green hills and architecture.
