Reflections on Year One of Grad School

I had a conversation with a friend and fellow intern of mine the other day about how much more we feel we’ve learned in graduate school (two years) already than in undergraduate school (four years). I’m nearing the end of my first year, and I am amazed at the arc of my own understanding and progress within the broader International Studies field. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I attended a private liberal arts school for undergrad and that I primarily studied English, French, and Spanish. I had a certificate in International Studies, which taught me a great deal, but my exposure to the current discourses–in Human Rights, in Development, in Security, and in International Affairs more generally–was pretty limited. After being at Korbel for just one year, I’m astounded at how much more I feel I know. I think back to last Fall and how nervous I was to speak up in class, and how (in some ways) unqualified I felt to make assertions or predictions or any kind of definitive statement about politics, the global economy, Africa, food security, anything, and I am really proud of how much more confident and assured I feel about what I know at this point. And I have felt the effects of my education not only on an intellectual or academic level, but on a deeply personal level as well. I’m sure I speak for many more of my fellow students when I say that studying this field impacts the choices you make in your everyday life and shapes how you interact with others. I am more aware of my purchasing power, and try to consciously avoid buying products manufactured or distributed by companies that I know have been involved in human rights abuses. For example, I won’t eat at Chick-fil-a (or however the hell you spell it) and I won’t buy Chiquita bananas because of the way they treat their laborers. I try to bike or walk whenever I can because it’s better for the environment, and I know that as global warming continues to escalate, the world’s poor are going to be the most affected–they will be the ones paying for our mistakes. It sounds silly, actually, as a laundry list of “good Samaritan” duties, but the broader point of how these things I’m learning are bleeding into my personal life is the one I am trying to make. It’s a good thing.

This upcoming week is Week 8, meaning it’s go time for real…Spring quarter is a little longer than Fall and Winter, so we actually technically have eleven weeks, ten of which are classes and one of which is finals. So I have three weeks to finish everything I need to do, and I am going to try REALLY hard to get it all done in two weeks so that I can have a week of vacation before my new internship, etc. begins. Things to do: 10-15 page paper on food security and nutrition in Ethiopia for my Health and Development class (already have about 5 pages). Subsequent presentation. Edit my section of the group paper for East African Development and Human Rights, and do a group presentation. Edit my draft of a paper on human rights regimes in India for Human Rights Research and Design, and write ten more annotations. 25 page paper on a TBD topic for International Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict. Last bout of readings for class. I can TOTALLY do this. Thanks for reading, folks…happy almost summer!

Week 4-5 Update

Just made it through Week 4, which actually felt more like Week 9 in terms of workload…I had a paper and major project due consecutively for my two most difficult classes, plus a ton of reading that had been assigned for that week. So needless to say, I was very happy when Friday rolled around. I spent the weekend sleeping and making pesto (fun green goodness!) and doing homework assignments for the coming week. Weirdly enough, it snowed Monday through Wednesday of last week, and is supposed to be snowing again tomorrow and possibly Tuesday. That is definitely one marked difference between Denver and the East Coast…it snows a LOT during the winter back East, but it’s pretty much done by April. Here, it snows periodically during the winter and is nice most of the time, but we apparently get random one or two-day snowstorms well into the Spring. Beeee-czar. Bizarre.

Other than that, not too much to report…..except these really awesome events going on at Korbel, which I am determined to attend in the next few weeks: 1) A screening of Freshwater Project International’s “Water First,” which is an award-winning documentary the talks about the WASH sector in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, and 2) A visit by the Ambassador of Kenya to the United States Elkanah Odembo! This one I am particularly excited about, given my interest in Kenya, the recent elections, and the class I am taking on East Africa. This is a good example of the kind of high-profile, really interesting speakers and practitioners Korbel is able to attract. There are events going on allllll of the time at Korbel (usually during lunchtime or after 5 pm), and a lot of the lunchtime ones come with delicious catered lunch (a definite consideration for those of us on a budget). Truth be told, I am terrible at attending events. I am somewhat of a homebody and by the time 5 pm rolls around and I’ve been at Korbel since 9 am, I’m usually ready to hit the pavement. That being said, I have gone to a handful of talks and all of them have been super informative, current, and interesting. And these particular ones look too good to miss.

Alrighty then…back to the homework drawing board for now. Bonne chance at bon courage à tous et à toutes. A très bientôt!

Updates Y’all

That is why escape day-trips like the ones these pictures issued from must be taken the weekend after Week 1, before all the work begins in earnest. My boyfriend Bryce and I day-tripped down to Colorado Springs (about an hour drive from here) to see one of my oldest friends, Julia. She took us for a really beautiful walk at Garden of the Gods, showed us around downtown, and took us to dinner at one of the local breweries. All in all, a really, really enjoyable way to spend a Friday:

     A l’approche–Colorado Springs

       On top of the world at Garden of the Gods      

But aside from gallivanting around Colorado, I have actually been busy being a serious student (…no, really). Le voilà: an overview of the four courses I am taking this Spring Quarter at Korbel.

International Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict: As a Human Rights student, I do not spend much time sitting in a classroom discussing war tactics. This, I imagine, is left to the International Security cohort. But because armed conflicts are so prevalent in the world, and because human rights violations so frequently occur during times of armed conflict, and because the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law govern more actors than just the military, I thought it pertinent to take this course. Turns out I was right on the money–it is, in my opinion, a very interesting and well-taught course. We learn about things like cyber warfare, and the changing nature of war (turns out we no longer really have wars–only armed conflicts), and the ICRC. Final paper: 20-25 pages in length. This is the only major assignment in the course.

Human Rights Research and Design: Annotated bibliographies! Global governance! Getting PUBLISHED at the end of the course! These are all things we look at, talk about, and (mostly) write about in this class, which I have so conveniently dubbed “HRRD.” It’s classified as a Skills/Methodology course in the MA Handbook, and aptly so. The assignment is for each of us to write a three-page paper with thirty (yup, thirty) annotated sources, which will then be published in Korbel’s Human Rights and Human Welfare Journal at the end of the quarter. It’s a three-credit course, so it meets once a week for 1.5 hours. I’m learning lots about annotations, human rights regimes in India, and peer editing in this class, and it will definitely look great to put this on my resume for future employers.

Health and Development: It’s official: I have decided to concentrate in International Development. So this is the first of a series of development courses I will be taking for the remainder of my time at Korbel. It is unequivocally the most challenging course of the quarter, but definitely very interesting. Topical areas surrounding health represent somewhat uncharted waters for me: morbidity, dual burden of disease, and WHO-led initiatives are terms previously unknown. But I am learning on the weekly, and I expect to come out of this class a whole lot more informed about health and the ways in which it relates to/facilitates/presents challenges for development. (Sidebar: I have to make TABLES and GRAPHS in this course. Can’t help it–strong aversion to numbers here. This is not uncommon for grad students. But I know it’s helpful, and will potentially be useful in my future career, so I am ultimately grateful for the professor’s thorough approach to the course).

And, finally…

East African Development and Human Rights: Love this class already. I’ve written a few papers on Africa so far during my grad school days, but this class is exclusively and intensively focused on East Africa, a region I have been wanting to learn more about. The refugees I worked with last summer were primarily from the DRC and Eritrea, and my current internship (which you’ve heard about already) focuses on Kenya. So the experience is (indirectly) there–now I need the history and the concrete context. Thus far, the readings for this class have been really compelling and nicely varied. We have a 5-page brief due next week for which I haven’t chosen a topic, so I need to go ahead and do that. We also have a group project/paper/presentation that spans the entire Quarter, for which my group is thinking of writing about social justice and sexual violence in Tanzania in some capacity.

These, folks, are the best four classes I’ve taken at Korbel thus far. I’m definitely having a homework-heavy quarter (in contrast to last quarter, which was homework-light), but the things I’m learning really do make it worth it. Now: to weather the blizzard here in Denver and go to sleep early(ish). Hasta luego a todos!

 

Denver Nuggets Games, Ethiopian Food, Paper Writing, and the Kenyan Elections

I realize I’ve been pretty absent on the blogging front this quarter, so I apologize to those of you who read this…I don’t really have an excuse, either, since this has been a decidedly easier quarter than my first one. I spoke with someone who graduated from Korbel a few years ago, and he confirmed that, sometimes, you unwittingly stumble into an easy quarter, when the reading/writing load for the classes you have chosen is somehow just not very heavy. It’s been really nice actually–I’ve had a steady but very manageable amount of schoolwork to do, and have been able to live my life as a normal person outside of grad school-related things. I’ve had the chance to do things like this:

Denver Nuggets game–yep, the cheap seats.

And this:

Tried Ethiopian food for the first time–it was pretty damn delicious.

And it’s been really, really nice. But tomorrow marks the start of Week 9, the second-to-last week of the quarter before finals. So “things” are starting to hit the fan and it’s time to buckle down and do some work. I just finished writing a paper on The Dublin Regulation, which is the backbone of EU asylum law, for my International Law & Human Rights class (it’s a good class–take it). I must now move on to my 20-pager about the Luo tribe of Western Kenya for my Cross-Cultural Communication class, after which I will write an 8 to 10-page masterpiece that outlines a fundraising event plan for a selected non-profit organization. YES. CAN’T WAIT. …but really, it’s not that bad. I’ve got deadlines on my iCal, no plans for this coming weekend, so it’s full steam ahead. And Denver is looking really beautiful this week. The winter has been decidedly mild–we’ve really only had a couple of really cold weeks and a few real snowfalls at most, but I’m told that late winter storms are the norm out here, so I’m not buying into the springy weather completely just yet. Still…60 degree sunny days in early March…I am SO not complaining.

In other world news, the Kenyan elections are taking place tomorrow. There is a lot of anxiety surrounding these elections, as the last set were accompanied by really horrible violence stemming from ethnic tensions among tribes. You may also have read that Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate William Ruto are being indicted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity stemming from the last election…if elected, there would be some pretty serious diplomatic challenges ahead for Kenya, as well as the obvious, which is having two people of such questionable moral character in charge of an entire country. Really interesting stuff–the Daily Nation is a local Kenyan newspaper that’s covering the elections: http://www.nation.co.ke/. NY Times and BBC have also published some articles about it, but the local paper will more likely have more accurate news. Here’s hoping that everything goes peacefully tomorrow and in the weeks to come.

Anyway, that’s all for this update..I’ll try to post again before Spring Break comes, so you can be privy to some of my finals rantings and ravings (lucky all of you). Happy Sunday eve!

Winter Quarter Begins!

I can’t promise you beautiful photos for this post–I haven’t uploaded new pictures to my computer in awhile, and I’m feeling more in a writing kind of mood than a picture-selecting one. But next time I post,  I promise you more photographic evidence of my life as a graduate student.

Lots has happened since I last posted. Finals came and went, and though Week 10 and the exams and papers that followed it were most definitely crazy, I did indeed get through it successfully. Now that I’m familiar with how quickly ten weeks goes by, I hope to get an earlier start on my major assignments, and get ahead on reading when I can. Week 2 of Winter Quarter has just begun, and I already love my classes. I’m taking Financial Management and Fundraising for Non-Profits (very practical/applicable to my NGO internship right now), Cross-Cultural Communications (SO exciting for someone who studied English for part of the time in undergrad), and International Law and Human Rights (will be the most challenging of the three, but a really fantastic professor and will make for some good intellectual gymnastics). It crossed my mind to take 18 credits this quarter, which would entail taking one more full class, since International Law & HR is only six weeks. I have some classmates who are doing it, and in all honesty it probably would have been fine. But I opted not to, telling myself that I’m still a First Year and I’m still new to grad school and I can and should still take it easy on myself. ….right. Anyway, this promises to be a good Quarter. It is admittedly more challenging to get up in the morning when it’s so cold outside though. Denver, for all its good weather, is going through a particularly nasty cold spell right now, and there have been some highs in the teens as of late. Being from New England, I’m definitely used to the cold, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it. So yes. Getting up in the morning=more challenging. Also, something I learned from last quarter: I will never take a night class ever again. I had one during the 6-9pm time slot last quarter, and it was like pulling teeth trying to get my brain to engage after 5 o’clock in the evening. Don’t get me wrong; I know lots of people who love night classes. They allow you to sleep in in the morning, and some people are night owls, and some students who work full-time can’t even make it to class until 6 pm. But me, I like to be at home by 5. So I have arranged my schedule this quarter to accommodate that need.

Before I sign off for now, I do want to put in a plug for how utterly amazing the Winter Break is that you get at Korbel. It’s literally almost two months long: Nov. 20th through January 7th, give or take a few days, depending on when you finish with finals. But it’s just the best, most relaxing, most gratifying time to process, see loved ones, do some volunteer work, and celebrate the holidays properly with no distractions. So it actually is a myth, ladies and gentlemen, that it’s all work and no rest or play in grad school, because this break was ah-ma-zing.

 

 

A Rant About Israel

I think what’s going on right now in Gaza is absolutely shameful. Israel has ramped up its violent attacks on Hamas and the Palestinian people, and more Palestinians have been killed in the last few days than have been killed on the Israeli side in the past few years. There is also talk of Israel blocking food and medical aid to Gaza, which at this point is desperately in need of both. The US media is very selectively reporting on what is going on. And for Obama to stand up in front of the world and defend Israel’s right to self-defense?! He could have so much influence on Israel. He should cut off aid to Israel in any form until it stops its offensive. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been going on for so long, and both sides should be moving toward a mutually satisfactory, peaceful solution, not bombing the crap out of each other.

…these are the kinds of things you, too, will begin to rant about if you become a Korbel student. The more I learn, the more worked up I find myself getting about international affairs, especially when human rights abuses are involved. For example: did you know that the US has still not officially recognized the Armenian genocide of 1915? We are too afraid that we’ll lose out on our strategic relationship with Turkey if we do. It was bad enough that we did nothing during the genocide itself, but it’s even worse that we have continued to shelve our morals in favor of political interests. I find this to be so, so shameful.

Please pardon the rant…perhaps the craziness of finals has gotten to me. The good news: most people are finishing up and flying to their respective homes for Thanksgiving. People are starting to bask in the glow of free time that Winter Break brings. Tired grad students are collapsing on their beds and watching hours of mind-numbing television to recover. It’s the best of times, and the worst of times here during finals week. I currently have two more pages of my paper to go, so I will leave you with these thoughts. As always, thanks for reading.

Week 9 and Feelin’ Fine!

It’s currently mid Week 9 here at Korbel, and people are feeling the crunch. With ten weeks in the quarter, most of us have papers due and exams that take place next week, so it is high time to study, study, study! The snacks in my cabinet are already starting to accumulate in anticipation of long nights in front of my computer.

Snacks of the sort you might see on my plate during finals time.

Final exams at Korbel take various forms. The format of your final exam will depend entirely on the classes you are taking and the professors you have. For one of my classes, I have a traditional, closed-book, closed-note in-class exam. Study beforehand, come to class and write the exam for an hour and a half, and BOOM–done. For another of my classes, I have a big long paper (which is, as of right now, still of indeterminate length….scary). It will be assigned this week, and we will have about a week to complete it. Open-book and open-note. For yet another of my classes, we have the same kind of paper and open-source format deal, but we only have 24 hours to complete it. It will be posted at some ungodly hour of the morning, and due 24 hours after that time. Having not yet actually taken any of these exams, I feel as if I must withhold judgment. I am one of those students whose strength is in writing, so maybe the papers that I have time to polish will work to my advantage. HOWEVER, the open-book and open-note format is daunting because it means that the quality of the work the professors are expecting shoots way up. So you see it’s a give and take. Luckily, if you hate one exam format, you most likely will not encounter it across the board.

The big reward for finishing up with finals is Winter Interterm, which is deliciously long. It lasts from approximately Nov. 20th through January 7th. AMAZING. People do different things during Interterm–some take classes, some travel abroad through DU’s International Service Learning programs, some go home, some stay in Denver. I personally will be staying here in Denver for most of Interterm (including Thanksgiving), working on my summer internship search/applications, and continuing on with my current internship at The 1010 Project. The thought of having oodles of free time on my hands is, admittedly, very appealing. I am actively looking forward to Interterm, as it will provide a respite that I am sure many of us desperately need. I also hope to do more exploring of the Denver area while we are on break. Thus far, I have only had the chance to go clambering around Red Rocks, which was absolutely breathtaking:

One of the many beautiful views from my hike at Red Rocks Park

For now, though, I must continue to push through and get maximum amounts of work accomplished. Good night for now!