Snowstorm!

Eugene and Springfield hit record breaking lows and dumped a foot of snow on the town over the week of finals. It was gorgeous and amazing and I'd never seen anything like it, EVER! The snow was so heavy and dangerous our Psych final was canceled and we had to send in our 90 minute long presentations in to the teacher a few days later. But the snow- amazing! What sucked was I didn't know it was coming and didn't have groceries when it reached the point where it wasn't safe to drive.

THE CIVIL WAR!

University of Oregon's big rival is Oregon State University and the game they play each year is called "The Civil War." I was supposed to shoot a wedding this weekend, but my jerky bride let me book all of my travel to St George on Thanksgiving weekend, and then backed out two days before. She was someone I loved and trusted (the widow if you remember that story from my 1st anniversary) and she totally violated that trust. I'm happy for her, but her screwing me over was incredibly distracting from the joy and love I felt for her and her family. (Deep sigh).

Anyway, because I didn't end up working (yes she got married, she was sealed for time in the st. george temple) I was free to go to the game. All of the football games are free for students, so it was great! We went to the Wild Duck beforehand for snacks and then walked over with Carrie her husband, and Shashank. Robb came to the Wild Duck for lunch but took off before the game. Four hours of standing and screaming later, we won in the last 20 seconds.

 Shashank!

Ice Skating!

Some friends from school (Connor, Greg and Sydney, plus Greg's "friend") and I all went ice skating at the Rink Exchange. So fun!

I know you all long time followers are going to notice something really special about these pictures... ;) I'm just going to say, I didn't have a panic attach and I did great.

L-R Me, Greg, his friend, Connor, Sydney.

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...

First Football Game!

Back in October I went to my very first University of Oregon football game! One of my criteria for the grad school I attended was that it be a school that I was proud to go to, and would want to wear the sweatshirt with pride! USC really does that for me, but they don't have a program I would want to do (except maybe a law degree, but I'd never get in!) so going to a top 3 Pac 12 school is pretty cool! (Our program is also top 5 in the nation too!)

We tailed gated inside at a law student's house who I didn't actually know. (Look at me branching out!) It turned out the guy's roommate was dating a person in my cohort, but nobody knew that until they started holding hands (very awkwardly!) throughout the evening!

We had chips and salsa and drinks at Matt & Nate's house, and then walked about 20 minutes over to the stadium, with a few silly antics in the leaves on the way there! With us were some guys from our cohort: Robb, Mason, and Mitch, and girls: Carrie and Sydney, and then Mitch's girlfriend Sarah came too. (We LOVE her! She's hilarious.)

It was really terrible after the game, there was only one exit, and we ended up jumping a fence and sliding down a huge hill, jumping another fence, and then shuffling through a crowd of probably 60,000 students trying to all walk back the same way. It was in that crowd that the fireworks went off overhead- you had see how crowded it was! It was really difficult to stick together, but even the people we lost we found again. I had no idea where we were going so you bet your life I held on to Carrie like nobody's business!

Also some of my bruises from climbing the fence and falling and also Carrie knocking me off the bleachers in the stadium with her hips! (We stood for FOUR HOURS. That's how you do it in the student section, apparently.)
PS; We won this game!

My poor legs!