Study, study, study

That is pretty much all I do here. This fall was crazy. I would be in class from 10am-4 or 5pm Monday- Thursday, and then fly out of Portland (2 hours away) every Friday night or Saturday morning for a wedding back home. That schedule FINALLY slowed down and ended in November, but it was exhausting. I could really only study at school because I had so much stuff to do at home and was so exhausted I'd get distracted.

This term I had 14 units:

Psychology of Conflict: Which involved a huge photocopied 500 page book of articles we had to read, a few long essays, an hour and a half long presentation (canceled due to snow, but had to send in our work anyway) and lots and lots of class games which our cohort hated. We played kitty wants a corner and random grown up versions of red light green light and jeopardy- it was torture. I ended up writing my midterm paper on one of the games though so it served some purpose, but lots of people were upset about wasting class time.

Negotiation: This teacher was very sweet and flexible, which caused issues for our group since they are pretty much all crazed terrorists. We needed more structure and lecture and instructions and it got better as we went along. We had to do half a dozen short papers, and a 20 page final bibliography plus lots of in class role plays where we had to memorize our character's position and go through pseudo negotiations on different schemes, like interpersonal, small business issues, government issues- things where we'd sometimes represent a person and sometimes a large entity.

Adjudication & the Courts: This was my favorite class. It was basically an introduction to law class, and was all lecture. I loved the material and I loved the teacher very much. I am doing a one on one class with her next term to study international child abduction, which I am very excited about (And she wrote the book- literally). This class was a two hour final.

Perspectives of Conflict Resolution: This class had a new speaker each class who would come and talk about their perspective/job field in CR. We had anthropologists, teachers, psychologists, omsbudsmans, photographers, all kinds of stuff. I hated this class. It sounds great but it wasn't for me. I worked really hard in it, but the teacher was really trivial with his grading and I could not get what I was working towards or how to improve. Alot of the speakers were interesting, but most were hard to follow, and none of them tied their subject matter into the field in an obvious way. For instance, one lady spoke about bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) and chimpanzees and how they mate and war and how we're all affected by each other's smell. It was really interesting, but there was no lightbulb moment in the presentation where she said, "If you take into account that we're all reacting to each other on a biological level, that could really affect how your mediation goes." Or something. Also our professor spoke negatively against one of the speakers (who was invited as a guest) and I found this upsetting. Not my favorite class. Could have been done much better. We did one short paper, two long ones, and a 30 minute presentation.

Seminars: We spent about 2 hours a week in various uncredited, required seminars where we talked about our feelings on the program, the material, what worked and what didn't, and then got instruction on how to navigate the program too (registering, doing an internship). Alot of these turned into group therapy sessions and at least half a dozen people cried in them over the term. It sort of made me want to fling myself out the window. We also had to participate in a four hour "Privilege" discussion, which is meant to raise awareness and sensitivity for those that are in some kind of minority group (poor, working class, person of color, un married, transgendered, whatever). Mostly these talks always turned into "rag on X" discussions, which were emotionally draining to have in a class full of Caucasian persons. (Coincidentally we were told that using the term Caucasian is now considered racist.)  Coming from a background and childhood that was very diverse and extremely tolerant, I find many of the comments crazy and derogatory towards someone. Some people seem to think the solution to this issue is to "rag on X," however, you are not preaching tolerance and acceptance by marginalizing ANY group. Just like it's not PC to rag on someone's political beliefs... unless they are conservative. Someone called George Bush a murderer and an idiot in one of these things and I could not have been more furious. That's not acceptance. He's a father, a brother, a grandfather, a human being. They speak about the dehumanization of X culture, but if you want to humanize people- you humanize EVERYONE. That's equality. I have no idea how to teach that either. It was frustrating.

We also had a no credit reading seminar which was pretty pointless as the feedback we got on our work was "What do you think?" which wasn't helpful in facilitating growth in our work.

Every chance I got I'd go to the library early and stay late doing work or reading. It has been ALOT of reading. We read a book a week in my summer class but this was just alot and the material was often difficult to understand.

Me at the library...