The fun is almost over

First off, its been a while, but thats okay. There is an inverse relationship between the number of posts on this blog and the amount of work I do, so there's that right there. Its been a lot of research and paper writing, but its on stuff I've learned to love to do, so I'm okay with it. I'll try to make this post fairly short, but lets not kid ourselves here, thats not going to happen. So, listen. Here I am, 21 years old, ready to graduate college in a few weeks. Yep, three and a half years and I'm done. I'm also no longer an education major either. The thought process around that was long and convoluted. It seemed like a disproportionate amount of work- and meaningless work at that- compared to the eventual job placement that may glor may not happen. Moreover, it was just not that interesting to me anymore. Through the couple lessons I taught, I found that I was more or less forced to gloss over things that I thought deserved more attention. I mean, I think for my money the education program gave me a set structure, which is what I needed at the time, but I just felt that I was weighted down with so much work that I didn't want to do I had a hard time keeping my head above water. And that was just the two years I was in the program. What would I be like after another 2? or for a job (at least in the near future)?

Meanwhile, I've increasingly liked my political science classes, especially at the higher levels. Even this seminar I'm taking on comparative democracy thats pretty boring at least keeps my attention. So what did I do? I talked it out. I talked with the dean of the education department (my advisor had gotten a pink slip earlier in the year and I didn't want to talk to him), my International Security professor, and my parents of course. Don't get me wrong, I'd still love to be a teacher, and thats still in my realm of interest, but here's my deal: I feel like I can't teach just one thing in the broad sense, and heres what I mean by that: I was teaching a lesson last year about the french revolution, and I included the absolute monarchy, the financial crisis, the resulting concessions from the monarch, and the revolution itself. The feedback that I got was that it was too long and nobody cared. Well, my opinion is that you really can't learn about an event without learning its context; doing the opposite does students a disservice.

The nail in the coffin for me happened a couple weeks ago, when researching for the Model UN (I'm sure I'll get to that in a future post) and I found that I was actually enjoying the research. I mean, here I was with stacks and stacks of books in my room and three separate research papers on the table, and I was eager to do more research, even if it meant giving up a friday or saturday night. So, my political science professor and I devised a plan, and that plan is this: I can't apply to grad schools this year since the next time I can take the GRE is in February and grad school apps are due December or January so I essentially have a full year off. So I'm going to get an internship because I have no real political science experience. I'll also take classes in Russian and try to learn that. In addition, I'll study really hard for the GRE, maybe take some classes for that, and try and get into one of my top 5 grad schools: Madison, Minnesota, Washington St. Louis, Boulder, or Oregon

Osama Bin Laden Hide and Seek Champion 1998-2011

I'm alive! I'm sure you were all deathly worried about me, right? Well, I've been busy- er than usual. Its been a really horrible couple of weeks. Like last week, I pulled three all nighters and am still behind on homework. Its because last weekend was both Sigma Chi initiation and Relay For Life. Initiation was awesome as always, we initiated 9 guys, which is actually a bigger class than the University of Minnesota. Initiation was Friday night into Saturday morning and I stayed up all night for that, even though I didn't have to. All the initiations I've been at, save my own, I've missed something. So, I stayed up all night so I made sure I wouldn't miss anything. That ended at like 11:30 when we stopped cleaning up, so that was all nighter number 2. I got home, at lunch, and tried to convince myself not to take a two hour nap because I knew I wouldn't wake up. At 3 I went over to the Anderson Athletic & Recreation Complex Fieldhouse to start setting up for Relay For Life. We actually got done a little before 6, when teams were slated to set up, so I was able to grab my team's stuff and stake out a decent campsite.

Relay itself went really well, and I had a bunch of fun- after midnight. Before midnight was an absolute ****show. No one really had any idea what they were doing when, stuff didnt get printed out, and everyone had their own idea of how they wanted things ran. Somehow I got everyone on the same page and we were good. The one thing I was really worried about was the Luminaria ceremony. The glow sticks we were using to light the Luminaria bags looked to be going out every five minutes or so. We decided to pass out glow sticks before the ceremony, and have people crack them as they walked around the track. It looked really cool and it worked well. We had an acoustic performance during the luminaria ceremony (and after as well) by Matt Griswold and it was really touching. The ceremony, the speakers, all of that was really well done if I do say so myself.

I ended up losing the concessions stand key for a while, which was really stressful for a while. I figured out that I had locked it in the concessions stand itself, so all I had to do was open the door and get the key. The problem was, there are only two keys to that door- I had one and the Athletic Director had the other, and it was 1:00 in the morning. I called our public safety and they called Saint Paul police to try and get the door open, but nothing worked; they didn't have a key and couldn't pick it. I had left some ice cream out on the counter to thaw and I was cooking pizza rolls on the hot dog rollers (because there was no oven), so after I was resigned to the fact that I wasnt getting the door open until the AD answered his phone, I got pissed that I would have to clean all that ice cream up off the floor.

It was all good though, we just got breakfast to the relayers on time and we had enough food! Some highlights were watching TC and the Wild mascot play beer pong against eachother, watching the chair of the Political Science department do the velcro wall, a 6 hour long volleyball tournament, and running a 4:52 midnight mile in my boxers. Good stuff, and I can't wait until next year.

Also, a quick shout out to Dougie Fresh, emperor of the Brooks Fanatics program, who donated two free shoe certificates toward the event. You're the man!

We ended up raising $29,082 toward the American Cancer Society

Old enough to know, but too young to care

That title doesn't really have any bearing on this post, its a lyric from a song called Haight St. by Anberlin that I'm really into right now. The whole CD really- called New Surrender, check it out. Also, its 11pm when I'm starting this, so spelling mistakes will be abound. I have to get up at 6 for work and I'm running on diet snapple, but whatevs, I'll brew myself another pot of coffee.

Anyways, "Spring" break is over. Spring was in quotes because it isn't very spring- ish at all. In fact, we got a good 3'' of snow when I was at home, which kind of threw a wrench into my running plans. Not that much though. Other than running, break was all researching and Madden '10. I took the Vikings to the Super Bowl, I know you're all proud of me. Sage Rosenfels was the MVP. Place your bets for this season, I'm going to be running T- Jack and Pat White out of the wildcat a lot. Enough about that though. I changed my research topic too, now its going to be the effect of the Biological Weapons Conference on Biological Weapons proliferation. I'm reading this book called Biohazard by Ken Alibeck (not his real name), the second in Command of the Soviet Union's Biopreparat facility, a clandestine BW complex masquerading as a pharmaceutical research complex. I don't know how to describe it- eye opening? scarry? fascinating? probably all of the above.

So today I went on a legit long run, my first in a week. I was planning to go 18, but I went 14 instead. The run started out terrible. I was running on Cleveland Ave about a half mile into the run, slipped on a patch of ice, and tripped headfirst over a planter on the sidewalk. I run past that planter every freakin day and it never gives me any trouble. Why now? Anyways, I went over headfirst, but ended up landing on the side of my hip. I was wearing my running tights which somehow weren't ripped. However, my side is all scarred up and red toward my butt. I bet my iPod that I just bought is broken too since I was wearing it on that hip. Scratch that, the screen is cracked something awful, but I can still use it and it still works. So, that was the excitement, I was up and off after that. No blood, thankfully, and I was able to breeze through 14 miles relatively easily. Tomorrow's run is going to suck though, since its already getting stiff and still stings like no other.

I'm going to try to wear my new Ravenna 2's to class tomorrow to break them in and then run in them, so look for a review of those in a while.