A Quick and Dirty Update

So if you couldn’t tell by the crickets on this blog, it has been extremely busy here at the Josef Korbel School. And since I refuse to give up sleep, I slacked on blogging. #sorryimnotsorry

So what’s been keeping us all so busy? Well after a whirlwind Spring Break the third (Spring) quarter started in late March. From the beginning we all hit the ground running. Per usual I’m taking 18 credits, but this quarter I am doing a lot more “skills” classes as they’re called. Basically less research papers and more getting my hands dirty (literally, I rolled down a hill gathering GPS data points for my Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class last week).

But just quickly, and since this is technically a marketing blog, I don’t feel guilty just making a quick little get jealous of our awesome events/speakers list over the past few weeks:

1. Condoleezza Rice

Yup. She’s a Korbel alum. She came to speak over a course of 2 days, guest lecturing in classes, speaking with small groups of students and doing a large event at the Cable Center.

2. Madeleine Albright

Ya you think we couldn’t top Rice… but she kinda did. Maybe because she was the first women Secretary of State, and is just about the spunkiest lady you’ll ever meet, but Albright rocked the house. And by the rocked the house I mean she did an impression of young teenagers grinding on the dance floor at a wedding…. fine.

3. Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaci

This was interesting because being a part of the rebel group that gained Kosovo it’s independence he has a sordid past. AKA some countries have called him out for war crimes (organ trafficking and the like). So there was a lot of security, but students tried to ask some tough questions anyway.

4. Ambassador Eric Jon, Advisor to the Chief of Staffs

The former Ambassador to Thailand/Tanzania and a bunch of other countries came to speak to my Statebuilding class about the difficulties and obstacles of, you guessed it, state building.

5. Elaine Weisman, Partners in Health, Peru Coordinator

If you have any interest in Global Health affairs, firstly you should check out the certificate offered, and secondly you know how big a deal Partners in Health is. This is the Mountains Beyond Mountains guy (Dr. Paul Farmer). Anyway, the overview of the Peru program was incredibly interesting.

6. CORD Symposim: Water Rights

This isn’t a person, I know, but the Center on Rights Development put on a month long symposium on a bunch of aspects on water rights. Everything from Western water in our own backyards to privatization, and rivers of conflict. It helped to inform my GIS mapping project that I will be working on later this quarter. Fascinating stuff.

7. Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin

Churkin is coming on Friday. I’m really interested to hear the tough questions like… So Syria veto… WTF?

I’m sure I missed a bunch of people, but it has been busy here to say the least. And in true CO crazy Spring fashion, we had snow, wind, and then 85 degrees all in one week. Anyway, hopefully I’ll be better about updating this quarter than I have been :/  …

 

An Ode to Finals

Oh Week 10.

You’re here again.

I can’t help but notice

 I’ve beat you before this.

But this time you’ve got me

writing poetry.

I’ve exhausted my Netflix

and cleaned with Windex

Can no longer procrastinate

Except to sleep late

And write a blog post

more rythmic than most

 This could be a ballad

of how a girl went mad

Crazy, insane, and loopy

How her brain just got soupy

And she thought it would be funny

to get a little punny.

But if I can focus this long

to write a silly song

I can probably bust out a paper

and couple finals, and later

I’ll sleep for days

and count the ways

I’ve embarrased myself during finals

with zombie looks and weeping in library aisles

The way I’ve forced these rhymes

I can force myself to focus this time.

 

A Conversation with Dean Hill

It all started with a cancelled Valentine’s Day appointment… well, not for me, for my coworker. This blog post is already starting off creepier than intended. Oh well, full steam ahead.

I was working on a story for the Josef Korbel School website about a current Master’s International (MI) student who is serving in Cameroon for Peace Corps. As it turns out, the Dean of our school, Ambassador Christopher Hill also served in the Peace Corps in Cameroon in the 1970s. So of course it would be great fun to interview him on his experiences there and how that led him to his impressive diplomatic career. He’s served as Ambassador to Iraq, Poland, and Special Envoy to Kosovo among many other awesome tours. Hill is so important that he was invited to Washington to meet with China’s Vice Chairman, hence the cancelled Valentine’s Day appointment- I mean, he’s a busy man.

So, lucky for me, I took over the story a week later. In nerdy Int’l Studies student, journalism fashion I was unnaturally excited to interview someone with such a high level diplomatic background. Resume mention? I think so. But, as it turns out, Dean Hill is the opposite of the stuffy, high collared diplomat you would assume. I learned all about his time in Cameroon, including a few choice motorcycle accidents. As an MI myself, it was great to get advice about leadership direct from someone whose career I admire.

Christopher Hill in Buea, Cameroon with the infamous motorcycle

And as these things do, our conversation devolved to our mutual love of the Red Sox. Hill calls Rhode Island home and apparently is a big Sox fan, going so far as to take a flight out of D.C. in 2007 to watch a game against Colorado’s own Rockies (the World Series where the Sox broke the curse of the Bambino!), grab a few beers at Boston Beer Works, and head back to D.C. on a 5am flight in time for Condi Rice’s 8am staff meeting the next morning. Woah. I mean, could you be any cooler? Sliding past the fact that he is on nickname terms with Condoleezza Rice (who, by the way, told him “Chris, we’re not in college anymore”), does that not automatically make you the coolest government employee ever? I think so. But I may just be biased. At the time I was living a mere stone’s throw from Fenway Park and could hear the game outside my window seconds before my television caught up. And I don’t know if joining in the Kenmore celebration riots is something you should really tell the Dean of your graduate school, but alas, my (not so) professional interviewing skills can only get me so many good quotes.

Fenway Park: I used to live by the Citgo sign to the left side near the river (the Oranage Triangle sign)

So there’s bit of insight into our Dean. Embodying much of spirit of Korbel- work hard, and when you have the ability to pop up to Boston for a World Series game (or a few epic mountains to ski), you should play a bit hard as well.

As this is Week 9 of the quarter, I’m squarely in the “work hard” phase, but in a few weeks, I will be freer, Denver will be warmer, and maybe I’ll even catch a Rockies game later in the year.

 

 

A Collection of Siskisms Vol. 2

Because I simply couldn’t get enough of Professor Sisk last quarter I decided to take his Politics of Deeply Divided Societies Class this quarter as well. And true to form, I got a slew of awfully fantastic political puns. Here is a Collection of Siskisms Vol. 2:

1. Ugh! What an awful piece of jargon… and I came up with it.

2. You probably have a file box with the urbain theories of Dr. Sisk.

3. So the security dilemma, if you haven’t come across that yet think like WWI… so Downton Abbey.

4. This might be the dumbest analogy I’ve made all day, but for for self identifying, just because you self-identify doesn’t mean the group allows it. Ok think like a Harley-Davidson Identity: I could go get a hog, get all tattooed up, but I’d still get beat up in a bar.

5. TOKEN (Transfer of Knowledge by Expat Nations)… sounds like a Norwegian Troll.

 

 

4 Doctor’s Visits, 3 Vaccinations, 2 blood donations, and a very long medical form

A few weeks ago I submitted the last of my paperwork for the Peace Corps application process. All in all, while it took a long time, the entire application wasn’t too arduous: the typical reference letters, a personal statement, and an interview. What took the most patience and organization was what came next: the dreaded medical evaluation. I was sent an envelope mid summer with about 15 forms and instructions. Because of my program having me do classwork first, however, I dutifully put it to the back of my mind.

Come December it was time to fill out the forms. Luckily I had moved back closer to home for grad school and so was able to use family doctors instead of finding new clinics. Even still, I think I visited all the forms of medical professional in the course of two weeks (family doctor, nurse practitioner, dentist, optometrist, lab technician and surgeon). Thoroughly poked, prodded, vaccinated, x-rayed, urine tested, blood tested, prescription renewed, and wisdom teeth removed later I sent off my forms to play the waiting game once more.

Surprisingly, a mere three weeks later I got the notification that I had been medical and dentally qualified. I hear most people go through a rig-a-ma-roll of back and forth over these forms so I was very pleased to hear that my anxious triple checking that they were correctly filled out had payed off.

So now they are doing the final evaluation in the placement office. I simply have to wait and see where I will be placed come next fall.

Now that I am about half way through my program at the Josef Korbel School, I am very happy that I am doing it in this order (classwork and then Peace Corps). I can tailor classes based on where I will be going and really use my classwork/theory in the field next year. I feel much more prepared and hopefully useful. The other great part is that we had the Director of Peace Corps Aaron Williams come and speak at the university last week. The opportunity to meet the Director of Peace Corps even before I go was a fantastic way to keep grounded when a lot of the time I feel like I’m just waiting. He also let drop that some new countries will be opening up over the course of the year- including Tunisia. Anyone who knows  my background can imagine that I was bouncing in my chair like a little kid. To be doing development and governance work in a post-Arab Spring nation like Tunisia would be my dream (and my mother’s nightmare I’m sure).

And to continue spreading rumours- Nepal is opening up as well. Get excited future MI students!

And with all this excitement, it is mid-term week here in quarter system land and so back to writing I must go.

 

Nomadic Tendencies

Annnnd we’re back….

It is already Week 4 of Winter Quarter and I am, per usual, behind. The problem with Winter Quarter is that it takes place in winter, in CO, where there are beautiful mountains and powder days and 60 degree weather in January. I’m not lying, we just try to keep that on the down low, otherwise everybody would want to move here. The point is, I am so very easily distracted by all the fun winter things. Though as I write this it is again snowing so it really depends on your point of view and whether chaotic weather is your thing.

View from Telluride, where I snowboarded over break

In terms of classes, as I am starting to come up with paper topics it is becoming apparent that the theme of this quarter is nomads, or more specifically, nomadic culture. For some reason I seem to be focusing all my research on some sort of nomadic situation. For my Development in Cross-Cultural Perspectives class I will be researching nomadic education (as you can imagine, it’s a bit off the beaten path… get it?) which flows very nicely into my Politics of Deeply Divided Societies class where I am looking specifically at the Bedouin in the Negev for which I will using info from my International Law and Human Rights class about Indigenous rights. I’m thinking this will be some primary research:

Disney knows all about the rights of the Roma

Grad School Lesson # 56- repurpose research wherever you can, you don’t have time to write a bunch of independently researched 30 page papers in 10 weeks.

But as I’m doing all this research on nomads I’m realizing that what I’m working towards in my career is to become some sort of nomad myself. I think most development students are nomadic at heart. I get restless when I stay somewhere too long. An expat aid worker job description has my antsy mind all over it. In the past 8 years I have never lived anywhere for more than 3 without some sort of move or half a year hiatus. But I love it. The whole adventure craving syndrome. Being in CO helps in the meantime; there are plenty of 12,000 ft ski runs to barrel down. Basically what I’m saying is that had I been born in the 18th century I would have been a pirate, but the nice Robin Hood kind.

Charity is sexy

 

A Class in Time, Saves 9 (Thousand $)

I as write this scores of well meaning Korbelites are hitting the ski slopes, window shopping around 16th St, or cozily back at home reading what I imagine to be some combination of psuedo intellectual non-fiction treatise on the state of foreign policy… or if it were me, Vogue.

Alas, it is not me. I decided to take my 6 weeks off and well, not take off. Let me explain. Due to the weirdness of the quarter system, there are 6 weeks between the fall and winter quarters and only 1 week between the winter and spring. So the Office of Special Programs creates what is called the interterm quarter (yes, I realize that word is made up, we move on). Various classes across DU are offered in sprint style intensity for 8 hours a day for 1 week in December. What is this madness you ask? Well, for someone like me who is trying to accelerate their program, it is a great time to focus on one subject, finish some credits, and force myself to wake up before noon.

Especially because the summer quarter is on the whole less diverse in class offerings than during the year I couldn’t count on finishing up my 72 credits by August. Enter the Winter Interterm. This class was a great way for me to take another class before the summer, allowing me to either finish by August or go part time in the fall (so much cheaper). And since I was staying in the area anyway, I thought- why not?

So for one week I hunkered down to 8 hours of studying Human Rights and Mass Media, specifically the depiction of suffering in imagery and its effect on an audience (motivation? empathy? action? repulsion?). The course was taught by Joel Pruce, and thank goodness he is awesome because anyone less engaging would have meant a loooooooooooong week. With only 3 students in the class it necessitated a very informal seminar discussion type structure. Basically, great intellectual conversation all day, every day with fun people. As you can imagine by Thursday my falling asleep on the couch at 8pm to a Friends marathon on TV was entirely excusable. After 8 hours of graphic imagery there is really only so much more your brain can take.

The course was a great combination of my backgrounds and interests. The effect of media on the perception of human rights or the expansion of moral community (nod to philosopher Peter Singer) has direct impact on how imagery is used in advocacy campaigns, the news, and by development agencies. Full disclosure, there is a paper you have to write (it is a class after all), but luckily it wasn’t due during the week. I aim to finish it up by the end of this week in order to do all the fun things mentioned above when one my best friends comes to visit.

So while most people take off the full 6 weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, working for 2 of them does not seem like such a bad trade off when I consider what it will save me down the road. I still get my vacation, just delayed a bit. And besides, most people have exhausted their Netflix cue by now anyway. Speaking of catching up, did anyone see the most recent Dexter?? OH EM GEE. But that’s for a different time.

 

 

A Little More/Less Wiser Now

One quarter of grad school is officially over. Whew! Those ten weeks flew by extremely fast. We get our grades tomorrow, so I figured I would post this before I look at them what with my rose coloured glasses and all. Also, I am hopped up on painkillers. I just ingested so much information this past quarter that it wouldn’t fit in my head without removing some other things so I got my wisdom teeth out as a trade off. Not too bad a deal considering I now have 6 weeks to recover.

The end of the quarter was, as expected, a lot of work. Where I had been on top of my classes a week or so ago I was suddenly very much behind. But c’est la vie, and we always get it done. Yes I am referring to myself as the royal “we” (thanks oxycodone/percocet). Three large papers and two finals later, I was free to have an (un)traditional American-Canadian-Mongolian-Iranian Thanksgiving. My family is a mini-UN around the holidays.

So after the fall quarter we get 6 weeks off. I, in my infinitely ambitious state, have decided to take the Winter Interterm course (more on that later) and get my wisdom teeth out. Everybody else is skiing, so don’t think I’m normal or anything. It is in fact possible to have fun here.

Here are some tips I have amassed over my first 10 weeks of graduate school:

1. Do the reading that interests you, and feel free to skim. While you should always be prepared for class, you’re only going to want to talk about what you’re interested in anyway so read that stuff and don’t sweat the rest.

2. Start papers early. If you’ve been reading my blog you know I have been doing the opposite of this the entire quarter, but I think it came back to bite me. I say this to myself every year, and yet it never happens. Old habits die hard I guess, but maybe there is hope for you!

3. Be social!. Graduate school is all about meeting people and networking. Your peers are going to be your colleagues so get to know them. They are all really cool, especially at Korbel. Our class (2013) has been especially chummy and it has been great to have such a good support system. Even if we are all caffeined out and taking over the library together, that counts as hanging out right?

4. Ask about professors. Even if the class doesn’t look to be exactly what you want, if the professor is amazing the class will be amazing. And vice versa- some great classes can be taught by professors that you simply might not see eye to eye with. Ask around before you register, but take everything with a grain of salt. Just become somebody didn’t like a professor doesn’t mean you will agree.

5. Keep up with the news. This may be obvious at a school for International Studies, but being on top of current events will not only help in the classroom it will make watching The Daily Show that much funnier. With my background in journalism I have an unhealthily large news intake (maybe why I put off my papers so long?), but for all the non-news junkies out there a simple scanning of a daily newspaper will do. Following @denverpost is good- they have a good inflow of tweets without being overbearing.

6. Go to events. Or, if you can’t go to events, read about them on the Korbel website (shameless plug for my coverage). There are some really cool speakers who come through, and if your brain isn’t stuffed enough, you will be challenged to think outside the box over and over again.

7. Get/Keep your sense of humour. Don’t take it all too seriously. We all have goals and ambitions and are working hard and studying hard. Don’t forget to play a little hard too. Grad School isn’t a stepping stone to life, it’s your life right now (or will be) so live a little. Keeping yourself cooped up with books isn’t going to save the world any faster than bringing those books out to discuss with friends over a drink.

And as always, if you’re a prospective student, contact the peeps at the admission office with questions if you have them. They are super cool (I promise) and really willing to answer anything. Plus their blog is pretty funny.

Also coming soon- Korbel podcasts! So be sure to check those out too. Daniel and I (mostly Daniel, but I get credit for the disclaimer at the end have been working on some cool ones. I’m a face for radio and a voice for print, but we’re a small staff soooo… it’s going to be that much awesomer.

And now this blog post is too long and I am making up words. One last thanks to the wisdom teeth drugs.

 

 

Being the EU

So just what are classes like at the Josef Korbel School? Well, if you guessed spending 10 hours on a Saturday pretending to be the EU’s foreign policy representative and mediating an agreement between Israel and Palestine, you would be right. And if that sounds awesome, it was, and you should come here.

This past weekend my Conflict Resolution course held a simulated negotiation between Israel and Palestine. We had teams representing those two sides, the US, the EU (I was Catherine Ashton, my partner Tony Blair), the UN, the Israeli NGO Peace Now, and Hamas. Coming in to the negotiations understanding your team’s policies, and mediation techniques meant duking it out over the nitty gritty of settlement issues, water and sanitation, civil society projects, funding, and even a bi-national highway.

This event was really enlightening in that even when you have a bunch of people who are studying conflict resolution together, it was difficult to come to any agreements. The day ended with no peace, and a watered down agreement over joint civil society projects. It made me appreciate the role of diplomacy and how difficult it is. Arguing over 100 feet of ground can take hours, and where there is simply no budging, outside powers can only do so much.

The EU’s major leverage in these talks was funding (for humanitarian and development projects) and given the dire situation of the euro it was obvious how little sway we had. Getting down to the core interests of every team played out in interesting ways, including some meetings where parties simply walked out.

The day ended, of course, with a forced photo opportunity- gotta keep it real. Here is our “Obama” getting his photo with “Abbas” and “Netanyahu.”

not as awkward as real life, but close

But even though we ended the day without any substantial agreements, the process itself was a cool way to take the theory from the classroom and apply it. If anything, I spent 14 hours in high heels and a suit so I better get an ‘A’ for effort.

 

Week 9, and I’m Feelin’ fine

It’s week nine of ten of my first quarter. I seriously think I need a little pressure to get things done. Instead of getting ahead my research this week, I have been enjoying the small break before the next few days of craziness. In the meantime I’ve been making lots of lists, with pretty coloured pens of course, to trick myself into thinking I’m doing something important. Though if I schedule my panic attacks, maybe I’ll be able to avoid them all together.

I think the first sign that I’ve gotten lazy is that even when I have ample time to go to the gym and cook healthy meals, I have been doing 10 sit ups on my floor and mirco-waving a lean cuisine and calling it productive. Somehow I justify this by saying that I’m still doing these activities, just the sad, exhausted, low-budget grad school version. I promise myself I will do better once the quarter is over, but we all know that I won’t. And as soon as I get my wisdom teeth out I will have all sorts of lay around the house excuses. And I plan to use them.

So in the spirit of skirting my work here’s a few of the fun things I did in Denver this week:

The First Fridays Sante Fe Art Walk:

Every first Friday of the month all the galleries on Santa Fe open up to the public and there is free wine and you get to look at art, and covet after all the cool things you would buy if you didn’t rely on lunchtime lectures for food. Here’s a photo of one of my favorite paintings we saw. There were a bunch of these trees, and you can’t really see in the photo, but the paint is raised and apparently it took over a year to dry.

In one of the galleries along Santa Fe

The other fun event this week was the Colorado Cheese Festival. Stick hungry grad students in the middle of nowhere with 250 samples of cheese and watch what happens. I would say I’m cheesed out, but that would be a lie. It was all so good! Held at the Arapahoe County Fairgrounds, the festival was literally in the middle of ranch country, so the cheese was pretty fresh. Here’s just a taste of what we ate:

Goat Cheese and raisin crackers

Om nom nom. We ended the day with a lovely pint of beer at Kaos Pizza on historic South Pearl. I love studying over in that area at Stella’s Coffee Haus, which is apparently a popular spot. I’m just about to run off to do an interview at Kaladi’s Coffee though, so perhaps I will find a new favorite work place. South Peal reminds me of Boulder, where I’m from, and it’s a very cute area. At the very least it gets me off campus for a bit-sometimes I feel like I live at Cherrington Hall.

Well, to more interviews and research!