Academia!

I just took my only exam of the semester. It was in English, for Environmental Economics. I think I did alright, though essay exams can be deceptive. I had long answers for everything that seemed quite complete to me! We'll see how my professor feels.

I have had one (5 minute) presentation so far in a Chinese class and have another (15-20 minute) presentation in International Politics in Chinese on Monday. After that, the rest of my semester will be composed entirely of reading, attending classes, and writing papers.

I got through my short anthro presentation alright. I wasn't terribly happy with the level of thoughts I presented, but I was (and remain) quite certain that the professor wasn't actually grading the presentations on more than completion, so that is okay.

On Monday I will be presenting about the changing nature of military alliances. This should not suggest to you that I am in any way qualified to act as an authority on military relationships, but everyone had to sign up for a topic and that's what I picked from the list. A student or two present at the beginning of each class, and the the professor takes over and leads discussion for the rest of the time. In talking about alliances and collective security I am planning on discussing the Nile Basin Capacity Building Network that I learned about at the conference in Egypt last winter. It is pretty cool. Though it is not an institution with authority, it is a network of scientists and managers in the ten countries whose land includes part of the Nile watershed who work together to research discuss issues of river geomorphology and management. It is not a military institution, but I think that the existence of groups like this greatly reduce the role of military alliances. Hopefully there will at least be some good discussion.

Xiaoxuan and I are going on an HNC-arranged trip to Qixia Mountain on Saturday. Hopefully I will remember my camera :)

It is November already! I am making progress on my graduate school applications. Here are the places I am applying: University of California-Berkeley, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis, Clark University, University of Texas-Austin, and University of Colorado-Boulder (in the order in which their applications are due, if you were wondering). What's-His-Face is also applying to schools in Ohio and North Carolina, and since I'm planning on deferring for a year to work before I would actually start any of these PhD programs (er, Austin is just a Masters, I guess) (if, you know, I get in) I may end up living in one of those places for a while. It's a big country, folks! But it is smaller than the Pacific Ocean.

Good news is that as I have been working on my grad school apps I have been getting more and more excited about Geography and the questions it would allow me to professionally investigate about the world.
... I just had an excited conversation about it in my head but it all happened too fast for me to write down...MAN and then I tried to find a good summary on one of the department websites and they're all too exciting and I couldn't pick one...
Okay: Geographer study a wide range of questions, from physical environmental sciences to more or less anthropology. Geography is "the study of spatial relationships," which can be put to a lot of uses.
...Yeah, I'm gonna need to think about this and make it another post. Or possibly try to write about it when I am less caffeinated.

Happy Thursday!