Brace Yourself. Finals are Coming.

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Pictured: Melodrama

 

Top Cities To Be A Student In – No Denver.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jason Oberholtzer. His Tumblr, Ilovecharts, leaves me either intrigued or laughing so hard my sides hurt at least once a day. That’s why it pains me so much when I see him bring me information that is completely, patently wrong. In his blog on Forbes he posts a chart released by TopUniversities.com that ranks cities in the world that are best to be students in. So, this isn’t his doing, and I don’t like to shoot the messenger. Let’s just try and handle this with some grace and style… whatever, I’ll rant.

Here’s the list:

I feel like I should preface my rant with a short letter.

Dear Non-United States World:

Don’t confuse me for a national chauvinist. I like your cities. I like your countries. I mean, there’s not a city on here I wouldn’t jump at the chance to live in. I am, however, unapologetically biased towards the current city I live in. Nothing personal.

Sincerely,
DG

The fact that Denver isn’t in this list is a steaming pile of horse#%@. Since living here, I’ve been bowled over by the life that this city embodies. That’s not to say that there aren’t downsides to living here. Sure, when it snows the city does a crap job of plowing streets and snow quickly turns into pack ice. (Think that won’t do a number on your alignment? It will.) Yeah, the number of people who are evangelically snow-bound or outdoorsy vacillates between annoying and outright inconsiderate. Parking here is a nightmare.

Having said that, Denver sure as hell is one of the best cities to be a student in. I don’t think I’ve been in a city that has taken care of itself like Denver has.  Parks are ever-present in this city, and aren’t your usual oh-hey-look-a-flood-prone-area-let’s-turn-it-into-a-park. The Nuggets are doing great, you can get into Rockies games for next to nothing, the Avalanche are still not as good as my Red Wings. There are bars, clubs, longues everywhere. The standard of living here is affordable, the people are nice, the weather is awesome and the combination of federal offices and NGOs around here make employability with a degree from Korbel a certainty rather than a possibility.

TopUniversities.com, you’re absolutely wrong. Anyone here can tell you that.

Classy Like Marx

Last quarter, I had an absolutely amazing class, a class that challenged me but taught me a lot and a class I would undue if I could get my hands on a DeLorean and a flux capacitor. To protect the guilty and the innocent, names shant be disclosed, but this quarter seems to be an absolutely fantastic lineup of classes that are that absolutely perfect mixture of challenge, personal interest and fantastic professors.

Postcommunist East European States - Taught by Dr. Epstein, this might be one of the more . I’m focusing on US foreign relations and diplomacy, and one of the main areas of interest to me is NATO. The eastward expansion of NATO, which was followed in turn by the eastward expansion of the EU, might be one of the most revolutionary paradigm shifts in American foreign policy since Nixon opened relations with the People’s Republic of China. That’s not to say it’s been smooth. Issues in Hungary show that neoliberal trade policies and immediate transitions to democracy have done a good bit of harm in these nascent democracies, while others, like Poland, have been remarkably successful. Add in to this two lectures from ambassadors and you have one hell of a class.

Great Books in International Political Economy - I never had many IPE classes in undergrad. There simply wasn’t an offering at my alma mater. No matter, the program here at Korbel is fantastic and will bring any IPE neophyte up to speed incredibly quickly. I took my first IPE class on a recommendation from a PhD student I know here, and immediately became fascinated with it (Can you fall in love with a study?). So, I enrolled in Dr. DeMartino’s class this quarter. HEre’s the thing – It’s going to be full of heavy reading (I went ahead and read the first book over winter break so I might have a little breathing room during this class). Having said that, Dr. DeMartino is an amazing lecturer. He is passionate, he is personable, he is a one-man-show. He literally lectures with his eyes closed for a good bit of the time, weaving his hands through the air as if he were a conductor, and his class notes were the master score. It will be challenging, but I have no doubt I will learn tons.

International Organizations - Okay, tiny admission to make. I’m a boderline realist. I will emphasize boderline. That said, I really like IGOs. The intrigue, the turf wars, the ideological basis, everything about them to me is like a game of cloak and dagger on the world stage that is more grandiose, more dramatic and more specialized than any state-to-state discussion could ever be. You just can’t beat the fashion show that is the opening of the UNGA and the crazy speeches made there (Qaddafi, I’ll always remember you for your nonsensical one-shot diatribe in New York). This class is going to have some great chances to contribute to discussion, to debate and a series of great readings on everything from the ideological and legal underpinnings of international organizations, to the pertinent issues they attempt to tackle.

Long story short? Classes here are pretty cool.

Rumsfeldian Philosophy

Korbel can really do a doozy on these young first years.

I’ve noticed that coming back home. Home, where I was born and raised, is down in extreme south Arkansas. Not exactly a mecca for foreign policy wonks, but a haven for lovers of Z71s and Kenny Chesney. That doesn’t mean people here don’t ask questions, and some of the things I’ve said have surprised myself.

“How in the hell did I put that together?!”

It’s always interesting coming home, but after just one quarter, it’s amazing how quickly you notice the changes you’ve gone through simply by juxtaposing yourself to others. Suddenly you realize that one class with that one amazing professor did give you the answers to why things are happening the way they are in the world, that you have a more in-depth understanding of the machinery of the international stage. It’s in moments like that you realize that not only is every moment, every dime, every stressful moment from class in Korbel worth it, but you are becoming something far better than you ever thought you would.

That’s also when you realize you’re becoming a specialized professional. The only way I know how to explain it is paraphrasing something I read in Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. Twain talks about how for the casual passenger, and even the less specialized crew members of a steamship, the river is a mysterious, powerful thing that is as beautiful as it is dangerous. For the pilot, the river has lost all mystique. It is simply a collection of eddies showing hidden logs that could rip his hull apart, or slack water where he can push his boat to its limits or rapids from a spring flood. Twain equates this with how a physician might look at a blush on a woman’s face: Not that the woman may have some interest in the doctor, but that the girl may be infected with some pathogen and may be exhibiting signs of a fever.

Another example is my dad, an engineer, and that well-worn joke about black boxes and airplanes. “If black boxes always survive the crash, why don’t they just build the plane out of black boxes?” My dad finds no humor in this, because he understands weight/thrust ratios and limits of structural rigidity.

Not to say people at Korbel don’t have a sense of humor. Quite the opposite; humor is one of the only ways to cope with the stress, the subjects (especially the human rights kids, bless their hearts). But, humor changes. More knowledge means a differing, new perception, a differing perception means a different person and the cycle continues ad infinitum.

This doesn’t mean that Korbel has us drinking the [copyrighted beverage]. It just means that as we come to see more ways to view the world, we come to understand more about why people act the way they do. The international stage is no longer one long chain of deus ex machina beyond the understanding of the us, but something we come to fully grasp.

Funny how sometimes the only way we realize what we realize is to stack it up against something that is completely unexpected, like a country-lovin’, truck-drivin’, conspiracy-minded, overly-friendly barrista in a basement coffee shop.

How My Grandpa Introduced Me To Korbel

Yesterday was my grandfather’s birthday.

My grandfather was a hell of a man. He lived through the Depression, and survived the Great Flood of 1927. He joked with me once that he had an all-expense paid cruise and hiking trip across Europe. He took part in one of the forgotten amphibious landings in Europe, Operation Dragoon. Another joke of his: He used to say that the Germans had the decency to pull back the first day so they wouldn’t ruin the French Riviera with fighting. When I was a kid, I never knew exactly what my grandfather had done or why he had done it. I started digging through the dated encyclopedias on my grandpa’s shelves. You know the ones. They smell musty, the pages are tanned and the maps still show countries like the Upper Volta, the USSR, two Viet Nams.

I never was satisfied what I found or what I was seeing. So I asked more and more questions about what made my grandfather have to to go so far away for something I didn’t understand. A lot of the time, all I ended up doing was either annoying people or frustrating them by asking questions they didn’t have the answers for. I think my grandfather is the reason I became interested in foreign affairs in the first place.

It’s funny that such an interest, one I had from a young age, has only really started to be really fulfilled here. Don’t get me wrong, my undergrad years did a fantastic job as well. Great professors and tons of organizations helped give me a great start towards professionally studying international affairs. But here, this place, these people are experts and professional and live to explain why things happen the way they do in the world of ours. I have not, not once, questioned coming here. I have walked away from my classes feeling that I know more than I did before I walked in.

This, I think, is the single greatest metric of a good program. Sure, students can walk out of a program feeling worn thin from all the work they’ve done, and that in and of itself is a sign of a serious program; but, any school can simply overload its students without having a high quality education. Some students can leave a class feeling utterly in love with a subject; then again, we all have hobbies and interests that we know will never pan out into jobs or futures. No, it is when we work hard, we love what we do and, most importantly, come out knowing that we have gained from our experiences that we know we have made a sound choice and advanced.

That is the way I feel at Korbel.

Snow

Everything is quiet and muffled, as if the whole world is holding its breath. At the same time, everything seems so incredibly sharp, with an edge. It direct contrasts with the softer, more serene sounds that come with snowfall. Air is crisp, differences between colors are much more distinct. What sounds you do hear are far different from most you would normally hear, the crunching of of snow under boots, the slushy sound of a car’s tires briefly spinning as they try to find purchase and few drips of water that fall as the sun warms the snow on rooftops.

It is a different world when it snows.

Walking around campus, it becomes clear just how well maintained everything at DU is. The sidewalks are plowed well before most people even set foot on campus. The crisscrossed bricks making up the sidewalks around campus show the gaps between the red stones even through the snow. The gardens and lawns become smooth, featureless tracts of white that end right at the beige-colored slush that is pushed to the side of major roads like Evans and University after snow days.

Snow is funny. It’s simultaneously a major inconvenience, making travel a burden and a walk of even a few blocks fairly burdensome. But, that is easily outweighed by the child-like wonder that many still feel every time they come outside to see a fresh, clean, white world waiting for them.

The Quarter System; Or, How I Learned To Appreciate Midterms

Finals have come and gone, which obviously means I have time to blog again, right? RIGHT?! (Right.)

The thing I learned most from switching to the quarter system wasn’t what I thought it would be. Sure, it was a quicker tempo than the semester system, and classes start to become just a tad bit weary after two-and-a-half hours. No, what struck me the most was how quickly the classes went by with no grades.

I was that one freak in undergrad who loved having more quizzes, more tests, more assignments. While stuff like that is certainly more work, there is an upside to it that I held on to. More points mean more margin for error, more room in class you really mess up on a quiz or reading assignment or test. Classes here are more or less completely lacking in this. Well, one of my classes had a midterm in it, and that was invaluable when it came to preparing for the final. I mean, I knew what the professor was looking for, how to structure my arguments and so forth. With most of the others, I was completely flying blind.

And that, ladies and gents, is why I’m getting more and more nervous as we approach the release of grades.

Then again, that’s not an issue with the quarter system per se. That’s just grad school. However, the fast-paced nature of the quarter system really exacerbates the nature of no-feedback and lack of return on work.

- Daniel Green, Int’l Studies

The Weight

Finals summed up in one song?

The mood of finals summed up in one verse?

I picked up my bag, I went lookin’ for a place to hide;
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin’ side by side.
I said, “Hey, Carmen, come on, let’s go downtown.”
She said, “I gotta go, but m’friend can stick around.”

Do not listen to Colin, he works for the Robo-overlords.

There are those, like my good friend erstwhile enemy Colin Lawrence, who believe that robots might represent the next paradigm in the expansion of human rights. I argue that he is not only wrong but essentially serving as a fifth column for the impending robot takeover of Earth. We barely averted disaster last time:

So stand with those who have the right mindset, unless you can say this as a godless metal killing monstrosity chokes the life out of you:

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One of the arguments that Colin will make is that using robots as a source of cheap/free labor amounts to slavery. I say, nay! Do we consider the unthinking automatons of Detroit to be slave labor? No, we revile them for putting the fine people of Michigan out of work. Do we consider the adorable robots of Star Wars to be slave labor? No, we consider them to be hot-dog-munching midgets in rolling trash cans best described as “supporting actors.” Do we consider the super advanced AIs of Japan to be anything other than novelties or labor-saving devices? Well, we don’t. I think the Japanese technically classify them as a form of sentient life. Ask Colin, he lived amongst them for a few years. I think he was actually stuck on Dejima.

Another argument that Colin might throw in your face, not unlike some French noble tossing a soiled kerchief with utter disgrace for the working, toiling masses that is entirely deserving of public beheading, is that once robots gain sentience they deserve all the same rights as humans. First, it’s called human rights for a reason, Colin. Silly person. It’s not robo-rights. Or sentient-metal-monstrosity-rights. Or Philip-K-Dick-and-Isaac-Asimov-wrote-about-this-exact-situation-rights. So, while I say that we do need to afford something for the robots, maybe in a Constitution written in C++, we can’t exactly translate our rights to them. After all, we don’t have laser beam eyes or chainsaw hands that might or might not be covered as expressions of free speech, so I don’t think the system as it is will work for these titanium-shelled monsters.

Colin might even make an argument that using robots as soldiers is essentially the same as forced soldiering the likes used by the Lords Resistance Army or any other plethora of scenarios that use child soldiers. I make this counter-point: WAR WITH ROBOTS WOULD BE SO COOL. OMG ROBOLSERS PEW PEW PEW. My only qualifier: War against robots would suck so hard.

Look, here’s my point. Instead of worrying about whether the cold, unfeeling affront to God’s green earth that robots are deserve human rights, we should instead be worrying about what it will take to make Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford have some sort of reconciliation so they can fight off the Rutger Hauer lookalikes in a dystopian perfectly normal Los Angeles.

Well, unless they’re DJs. I’m totally cool with that.

Network! Network like your life depends on it!

There are a lot of pros and cons that come with being in such a small, tight community. The most obvious pro is that with a group of people this close, it is never hard to find out who has that book you need for class, or who knows just when that Groupon for cheap sushi expires. Of course, rumors spread like wildfires in an oil refinery.

Take the good with the bad, especially when the good so clearly overwhelms the bad.

I’ve heard several people around Korbel mention that my cohort is far more networked and connected than previous classes. It started out simply enough – a private Facebook group for incoming Korbel students. From there, we came to add each other as friends on the social networking monolith, then doing this strange thing that doesn’t happen too often anymore. We went out of our way to get to know each other.

The result has been fantastic. Several of us have had chaotic quarters thus far. There have been a few people hospitalized, there have been some who have received horrible news from back home. There are a few who have had utterly bizarre happenings, and some of us have been hit with a whole litany of troubles that, while easily handled when they come one at a time, are overwhelming when they hit all at once. No matter what it has been, this cohort has been there for each of its members. We’re not simply a group of people who have begun to add names in an attempt to boost a number on a social media site or just to have someone in a rolodex (or whatever the hell we’ll be using in a few years).

No, we are friends, quickly becoming a family.

I know that I, personally, couldn’t have survived some of the things I got hit with without a fantastic group of friends here that went out of their way to help me, to support me, to let me know that they would help me however they could. I hope I have been able to return the favor in the slightest.

Of course, it’s not all heavy-handed crap like that. These people aren’t simply a group of therapists. They are your bar buddies, the people who decide on a whim to have a potluck in an apartment that is really too small to hold that many people, the guys you scream at a TV with when your favorite teams are playing, the folk that are just as down to do something ridiculous/nostalgic/explorative/chill. But don’t forget, don’t ever forget, that the people you are hanging out with will also be the first who you go to when you need help. And remember you should return the favor without a second of hesitation.

Lesson to learn from all this? Moms, dads, don’t worry about sending your kids out here. They’ll be just fine.