The Road to Graduate School, Part I

Posted on March 15, 2011 by kdillmcfarland

This is my first post to the wonderful world of Voices! I’m very excited to share all that I have learned during the long process of grad school applications, visits, and (hopefully) many acceptances. I guess my setup will be a little different that most. It is already spring break so my “road to grad school” is almost over now. I’ll be writing a lot in past tense but I hope what I have to say helps someone because I really wish I’d know a lot of what I know now BEFORE starting this whole thing. So, here we go!!

Part I: Do I want to go to graduate school?

It’s kind of funny that I ended up in the sciences, biology specifically. In high school, I wasn’t a huge fan of all of my science classes; I actually hated biology. Microscopes gave me a headache and memorizing the parts of a cell just seemed so boring to me. Then, I had chemistry and loved all the chemical reactions and structures! But found it kind of repetitive by the end of the year. Then, there was physics. Oh physics…. we won’t talk about THAT relationship. Anyway, I came to UPS as a chemistry major but declared biochemistry as a sophomore because by that time, I’d had intro bio (BIOL111) here and LOVED IT! I learned bio wasn’t all about microscopes and memorization. Then sometime in junior year I switch to molecular and cellular biology (MCB). It wasn’t really a “decision” to go all bio per say. It actually came down to the difference between one class: would my last elective be bio or chem? I wanted to take cancer biology so I switched my major. Anyway that’s the long-winded explanation of how I got into biology.

Now, why continue to torture myself with classes and homework and all that even after undergrad is over? Well, during my time at UPS, I’ve TA’ed half a dozen or so labs. I’ve also been doing independent research for three years. So it came down to a random conversation with some of my friends where I was lamenting that I’d have to choose which was more important to me, which I wanted to do for the rest of my life: teaching or research. Someone then had the most brilliant idea and I will forever thank them for speaking up. They suggested why not be a professor? Then you get to do both. I was stunned it hadn’t occurred to me before and every day after, it just seemed more and more like the best idea EVER! So, I had a plan, become a professor. Well, that requires a Ph.D so in the summer before senior year I got my research face on and went to work on the Internet to find where there were good programs in my field.

So, the decision to go to graduate school was simple. It is what I need to do to be able to do what I want to do for the rest of my life (wow, that was a lot of dos…). It’s not that I’m scared of the “real world” or of not being in school anymore. And I actually feel that those are the wrong reasons to go to grad school. As many have told me, it’s going to be 6 years of hard work and if it’s not what you love, if it’s not something that you feel you need to do, those are going to be the most brutal 6 years of your life. For me, it will all be worth it.

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Mid-Terms, PSO Style

Posted on March 13, 2011 by ifox
Mid-terms are upon us. And you can tell.
The campus is quieter than usual; people dragging themselves from class to class (or running if they slept too late).
But somehow I’ve kept my sanity.
Last Friday night the Hillel organization had a Shabbat dinner, complete with challah, cougel and brisket. 24 people showed up for services and dinner, which was fantastic. Great way to start off the weekend; and when I say start off, I mean that when we were done with the cooking and we had cleaned up, THAT was the good start of my weekend.
On Saturday I went on a hike with Puget Sound Outdoors. We went hiking somewhere in the foothills of the Cascade mountains. My friend Sohan and I had a jolly good time.

It was absolutely incredible to be back in the mountains (I hadn’t been hiking since Passages). It really helped take away some stress, which should be a given ,since it’s a hike in the mountains. We even got some sun! When we were at a look-out point playing a game of Ninja the sun came out and gave us some Light, Sunshine and vitamin D! It was quite the joyous event. However much I love rain, it’s still nice to get sun once in a while….

The Puget Sound group hanging out at a look out.

Sunday I had an in-house retreat for the Spirituality Service and Social Justice office. We have some cool events coming up (March 28 in the Rotunda?) and it seems like the upcoming years are going to be increasingly busy and hopefully more diverse, in terms of backgrounds and events.

Back to mid-terms, Monday I had Philosophy and International Relations papers due, and a Geology test Wednesday. It’s finally over!
The campus seems almost more upbeat now — whether it’s because I’m a better mood or because people are done with mid-terms is up to interpretation. I vote for the latter.

Anyway, I wish everyone the best of luck with mid-terms and safe travels home!
I’ll be on campus for spring break, doing the Alternative Spring Break program in Tacoma, volunteering and whatnot, but you’ll here more about it next week.

Ian

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Puget Sound at Princeton

Posted on February 26, 2011 by ifox

Greetings, internet world! I’m Ian and this is my first post. Yayyyy.

It’s probably not fair to start my post off with a big, perception-of-the-world shifting event. But why not start off with a bang, right?

A few months back the University of Puget Sound offered me the opportunity to go to Princeton University in New Jersey with two other Loggers for the fifth annual Coming Together conference. As a member of the Interfaith council and being involved in religious life on campus, I guess it made sense.

Since this is my first post, I’ll give some back story. I came in to college planning on having nothing or very little to do with religion/the religious community. But as the weeks wore on (and as I took a Religion class), I started to become fascinated by it. The history of each religion, how they interact, how they’re different from each other, how each religion influences peoples’ daily lives, etc. So I joined the Secular Student’s Association, the Hillel (Jewish Student) Organization, as well as the Interfaith Council (people from different religions spending time with each other to understand and appreciate each other as people and their religions). Second semester, I was hired as the Social Justice Interfaith Coordinator through the Spirituality Services and Social Justice office. While I entered college pretty anti-religion, it’s an important thing, Interfaith work. Think about it: with more cross-religion peace, there would be no Middle East conflict, no Ireland conflict, no war on terrorism (arguably), and you can basically take away 4/5 of the wars in history.

Cool, so that’s done; back to the conference.

Since neither you nor I would want to hear about absolutely everything that happened at the conference, I’ll give some highlights.

  • The first night of the conference we went to the Museum on campus and got to see some incredible art with performances by different religious music groups on campus.
  • Dr. Eboo Patel gave the keynote speech on Friday afternoon. I was one of the few people in the room who had seen him speak before (he came to Puget Sound in October for a Swope lecture: definitely an awesome thing about the school). He delivered a speech about interfaith dialogue and presented three steps to creating a good discussion, all essentially being: become friends with people.
  • On Friday I went to Hindu, Muslim and Unitarian Universalist prayer ceremonies as well as Buddhist meditation and Shabbat services. All of them were incredible experiences, but the one that I loved the most was the Muslim Jum’ah. It was a gorgeous service and it really impacted me.
  • Friday night we had a “Professor’s Night” with four professors at Princeton, all who spoke about their own religions/spiritual backgrounds and discussed how their respective topics (Politics, Dance, Religion and Judaic Studies) fit with Interfaith dialogue. After their talks they sat down at our tables and we got to have discussions with them. The Dance professor was my favorite, talking about her Jewish upbringing and how it compares to her current spiritual beliefs, as well as how the study of Dance fits in with Judaism.
  • Most of Saturday was spend in student-led “Break-Out” sessions. I went to one on physical movement and dance in religion (which was quite interesting), one on the role on Humanism within Interfaith dialogue and one about Faith and Ethics.
  • Oh wait! I led the one on Faith and Ethics! The two other students from Puget Sound and I led a discussion on how Faith and Ethics are related and how they both influence each other, as well as why we hold our stances on both of them. It turned out to be a great discussion with some really fascinating people speaking up.

Overall, it was an incredible experience. Life changing sounds dramatic, so I wont say that, but it was really truly unbelievable.

You may be asking yourself, “Self, why is Ian talking about another University in a blog post about UPS?” Well two reasons. 1. The University of Puget Sound actually hosted this same conference last year (and from what I hear it was better than the Princeton one) and 2. It was Puget Sound that offered me this opportunity. And without sounding like a spokesman for the school, that’s pretty awesome. So, thanks, SSSJ office.

An article about the conference was actually on the front page of the Huffington Post last week, which can be seen at the link below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/qasim-rashid/a-muslim-a-christian-a-si_b_826157.html

But for now I am back at school, working hard, enjoying the snow we have. More posts to come.

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Easy As 1-2-3

Posted on February 25, 2011 by aschoblaske

I was recently told that all things – both good and bad – come in sets of three. With 3 rejections under my belt as of Wednesday (no need to elaborate… they are all water under the bridge), I’m ready for the acceptances to start rolling in!

Acceptances or not, though, the last week has been full of great things around campus, around the Tacoma community, and especially around the weather forecast.

Last Thursday, the 17th, I was part of the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation’s Be The Spark Dialogue day at Lincoln High School (you may remember that I talked about the training in my last post). The experience was just as positive and powerful as I was expecting it to be! The students that I worked with have faced countless adversity in my life, but they are such power individuals with pride for their community and passion to change the status quo. They wanted to pursue everything from forensics to dermatology to gay rights activism… and they are only high schoolers! After spending the day with them, I am even more hopeful for the future of Tacoma and of our entire generation! Here’s a great picture of the whole group dancing during our lunch break:

The whole point of the dialogue is to get the students to have a real conversation and to challenge them to find their “spark”, or their reason to improve their lives and their communities. Here are the sparks that our small group (led by me and another Puget Sound student, Caitlyn) came up with. They are pretty inspiring, if you ask me!

That night, we had a full moon… Although there’s not much to say about that, it WAS quite gorgeous, and totally worth sharing a picture with you all:

This entire week, Sigma Chi (one of the fraternities) is having a fundraiser – Derby Days – that pits the four sororities on campus against each other in a competition to win various contests (trivia, lip syncing, etc.) and raise the most money. Gamma Phi has won the past 2 years, but competition is close this year! We’ll see how the points end up when Derby Days ends tonight, but regardless, the money raised all goes toward a great cause: Blue Energy.

Then, the big news that you are all waiting for… WE GOT SNOW ON WEDNESDAY! The snow started falling late Tuesday night, and by Wednesday afternoon we had a couple of inches. Not enough to cancel any class yesterday or today (much to the chagrin of many students… myself not included, since I’ve got to school in much worse conditions at Lake Forest), but definitely enough to transform the campus into a bit of a winder wonderland (and require the deposition of salt onto the sidewalks – aka ice rinks – this morning). Here are some pictures from the past couple of days:

As the snow started to fall on Wednesday, sitting in Oppenheimer Cafe felt like I was in a snow globe! If this wasn't already my favorite place on campus (it was), it definitely is now!

What makes it even better? Why, the student barista's snow-inspired costumes, of course!

And, of course, the requisite shot of campus (the walkway near Todd Field, and a little bit of Warner Gym and Wyatt) covered in snow.

This morning was my dental school mock interview, where 2 professors and 2 staff members interview me. It’s used for multiple reasons. One is simply practice for my real interview next year (the interview is video taped so that I can remember what I did well and what I need improvement on). The second is so that the Health Professions Advising committee can write a committee recommendation letter, making my application even stronger. I am taking time off, so the process is just starting, but it’s still exciting that the possibility of being a dentist is becoming real. The interview went pretty well. I definitely have some things to improve on, but I have plenty of time to practice… and the feedback from the panel was EXCELLENT. I keep finding more and more reasons to love this school just in time to leave it in May. Alas, I’ll keep growing until then.

So, now, I’m just sitting in Oppenheimer Cafe, watching the snow melt under the shining sun, and waiting for my noon Biochemistry class. Today, we are wrapping up glycogen synthesis/breakdown regulation, and watching two student presentations (which should be really interesting; one is on a possible staph infection antibiotic). Life is good, and I’m waiting patiently for the pending 3 acceptances.

Posted in Alayna Schoblaske '11 | Comments Off on Easy As 1-2-3

With My Sights In and On Seattle

Posted on February 20, 2011 by leah vendl

From Crystal Pite’s “Dark Matters”

This weekend I saw perhaps the best dance performance I’ve seen live, Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM perform Dark Matters at On the Boards (great video here!) and take a master class from the company at Velocity the next day. It was incredible to experience choreographer Crystal Pite’s movement on my own body, awakening my elbows, armpits, and ankles as viable dance options! And now my job is to turn the experience of the weekend into words for my internship–quelle énigme !

I’m The SunBreak‘s first intern and having to quickly adjust to the fast-paced world of journalism (the world of online journalism, at that) as well as the differences between academic and “real-world” writing (mainly, rather than expand and take your time, it’s ‘be concise and get it done). The magazine is a watering hole of sorts, where Seattlites who maybe interested in a political issue might come across some dance writing they might not otherwise spend a moment with, and vice versa. My first piece was an interview with Amy O’Neal, a choreographer I had studied for my summer research (applications for which are due March 9, by the way!), a whole different kind of writing than I’ve done before–picking out important pieces from the conversation, re-ordering and making a story out of it:

Photo by Gabriel Bienzycki for Amy O’Neal’s “The Lowdown”

And then it was onto the next piece, the next show. I’m getting a taste of the life of a dance critic.

I must say, my life right now finally feels (almost) balanced. I believe it’s largely due to two of my classes are largely self-guided, and I’m able to set my own pace: the English Internship and an Independent Art Study (for which I got to design the syllabus–how cool!) I feel like I’ve got one foot on campus, with a meal plan and Diversions, I’ve got one foot in Seattle, where I’m planning to move in June. While I sometimes ask myself, why am I not planning something more adventurous like a post-graduation trip to Europe or a biking trip across the country? (as I have known friends to do). But then I think, settling somewhere is adventurous… and I’ve got to start setting up shop to start paying back those student loans.

In conclusion, even though I’ll need to figure out a way to generate an come June, my body’s seriously sore and I’ve got some serious reading to catch up on for class, I’ve got a plan A to attempt and taking the perspective that this is (at least for a while) the last semester where I’ll have “reading to catch up on for class,” overall I’m feeling pretty blessed.

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Less Than 3 Months To Go

Posted on February 16, 2011 by aschoblaske

I graduate May 15th. Today is February 16th. Which means that I graduate in less than 3 months. I’m trying not to freak out too much about that fact and instead focus on enjoying all of the things that are happening right now. Here’s a sampling of those things:

* Tests, papers, and dental school prep, oh my! Okay… Maybe these aren’t really things to enjoy, but I had my first round of tests/papers last week. It was tough studying for two big tests and writing a paper all due within 2 days, but it felt great to finish. It’s also amazing that I am able to learn – or at least review – so much in such little time. The human brain is pretty amazing, I suppose!!

* I’ve gone to three women’s basketball home games in the past couple of weeks. They won them all except one, and play their final two games this weekend. I went with my Gamma Phi Beta sisters, and we had fun making posters and cheering for our 5 sisters on the team. Here we are at the Think Pink game:

* Things for Relay For Life are also starting to ramp up. We had our Spring Kick-Off last week, and we have already passed the $5,000 mark for fundraising! It’s neat to see how many of my friends are as excited about it as I am… I’m sure that this year’s event is going to be the coolest and most exciting yet.

* I went to our campus’ performance of The Vagina Monologues this past weekend. All of the proceeds went to DAWN (Domestic Abuse Women’s Network), which is “a regional organization that provides victims of domestic abuse a secret and safe place to live while they reclaim their lives”. The house was packed, and the performances were fantastic!!

* I also went to a training for the Youth Against Violence Initiative. This is a program similar to the “Challenge Days” shown on MTV’s If You Really Knew Me. We are going to Lincoln High School tomorrow to guide these daylong discussions, and I’m really excited for the powerful experience that I’m sure it will be. It’s also neat to keep getting involved with new things because, even with 3 months left on campus, I’m still able to meet new people and make new friendships.

* I’ve also been able to fit in a few hours in front of the TV, surprisingly! I watched The Super Bowl (Go Packers!), and The Grammys. It’s always a nice release from homework to veg in front of the TV for a little while.

It’s crazy to think that Spring Break is less than a month away because, after Spring Break, the semester literally takes off and flies by. Before I know it, I’ll be walking down the newly-constructed Commencement Walk and into Baker Stadium to graduate.

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Before Setting Sail

Posted on February 14, 2011 by mkrauszer

Just a taste of my brief tropical vacation. I decided to leave the bikini pictures out.

Today was the best Monday of my life.

I am currently in Key West, FL having what they call “spring break”. Personally, I have never spent such a holiday in a warm place, as is apparently the cultural norm, but I am starting to see the appeal.

I spent the morning kayaking through mangrove channels and to a Florida estuary where I saw my first tropical Atlantic biota: purple and green amenones, sponges, sea stars, and sea cucumbers. I also found a horseshoe crab exoskeleton, which I carried around much longer than I should have and attempted to fashion into a hat.

After the morning excursion, I treated myself to some local sushi and retired to a nap by the pool (one of the four at this resort), where I stayed until the sun extinguished.

I should also mention that it is Valentine’s Day and, thanks to the boys in my group, I awoke to balloons and chocolate at the end of my bed. Always a pleasant way to start the morning.

I finished off this perfect Monday with a fancy dinner in downtown Key West and a powerwalk back to the resort. Warm weather is growing on me. Though I have no tan to show for it. You’re not surprised.

But, this tropical vacation is sure to be too brief; I board the SSV Corwith Cramer in just two days and work will begin again. Aboard the Cramer I will be responsible for steering, navigating, cooking, cleaning, watching, deploying nets, servicing trawls, maintaining the engine, manning the sails, swabbing the deck, and all that other good stuff. Fortunately, I have some shipmates to help me.

Did I mention I'm on vacation at a fancy resort? This is the view from the back deck of my room. Yes, that is white sand.

The voyage will consist of three phases. Phase one is training/orientation by the mates (scientists and crew), during which students are expected to wander around our 135-ft schooner looking confused and sea sick for a few weeks. Phase two is a cutback in crew responsibility and an increase in student proficiency. Phase three completes the transition to a student-operated sailing vessel, and students will take over both command and grunt work during watches.

“Watch” refers to both the span of time one is on duty, the work team to which one belongs, and the job one performs. Sailors weren’t the best at naming things. Our entire crew population will be split into three watches. Watch lengths rotate between 6 hours, 6 hours, 4 hours, 4 hours, and 4 hours. Somehow on a 48-hr schedule (I’ll learn the details during Phase 1). Watch responsibilities include the above-mentioned tasks, steering, navigating, etc.

To say I am excited for this Caribbean adventure would be a severe understatement. Six weeks under sail, four weeks without sight of land, minimal sleep, close quarters, daily research, midnight watch. All these are certain to be formative experiences in my life as a scientist and as a person.

The close quarters and lack of alone time will probably be my biggest personal challenge. Along with not having the internet. I suppose I will have to learn to form productive relationships with the people around me that can fulfill my needs for meaningful human communication without the artificial booster of  an online community. Bummer. I expect midnight watches on the bowsprit and journaling after hours will also help me maintain my sanity.

Cat Jenks, oddly, is excited for our shower limitations. We are allowed a saltwater shower every day and a freshwater shower every three days. The saltwater is a bit unproductive and people often opt out. I suppose they could substitute salt smell for ‘uman stank. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Hauling our bags into our five-star resort. Life is hard. My hair was pink then.

My hair is currently black. Whoops. It’ll fade in the sun. Though not before making my skin look even whiter compared to the tan, leathery vacationers around the pool. Thanks, redhead complexion and Alaskan heritage.

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Shipping out

Posted on February 12, 2011 by mkrauszer

SSV Corwith Cramer awaits class C-233 in Key West, Florida. This looks a lot like but is different from the picture I included in my first blog about SEA.

I am currently at the home of fellow Logger Cat Jenks and family. Nestled in the snow-packed city of Sherborn, MA, we have spent a relaxing few days enjoying a real home and real vegetables. I wouldn’t complain about the food at SEA since I ate a lot better than I did attempting to feed myself at UPS, but my house on shore was a bit lacking in the vegetable department during meal preparation. We hit success early with the  meat and pasta combination and ran with it. For six weeks.

The food here at the Jenks house, however, has been phenomenal. We had an early Valentine’s Day/send-off feast this evening which involved steak, ginger tofu, and chocolate covered angel food cake. I would love to stay at the Jenks house for a while. Unfortunately for our diets, however, we fly to Key West in the morning. I and 8-ish shipmates will be getting a head start on our tans before boarding the ship on Wednesday, where I expect the food will be adequate but not necessarily pleasurable.

We will be out of sight of land for five weeks after exiting the Gulf Stream and turning east toward Bermuda, and I can’t imagine there are many produce stores in the middle of the North Atlantic gyre (in fact it’s one of the deadest places on earth, so there’s not much production at all. oceanography pun.). On the up side, we will be out of sight of land for five weeks! This is certain to be a remarkable experience.

Unfortunately, that will mean the end of Krauszer blogs for a while, but you can follow the Corwith Cramer and her “daily” reports at the SEA current voyages blog:  http://www.sea.edu/voyages/current_cramer.aspx . I am supposed to alert you that even if we miss a day on the blog, it does not mean the ship has sunk. Sometimes parents freak out.

I spent about four hours today packing, unpacking, and repacking everything I will need for the next six weeks aboard a sailing vessel. It was stressful, to say the least. I mailed three boxes back to Washington filled with winter gear and most of my dark-colored clothing, and I think that I managed to distill out appropriate Caribbean apparel. I suppose we shall see.

I am certainly equipped to face the storms of the Gulf Stream. Armed with two full sets of “foul weather gear” (affectionately termed “foulies” here at SEA), XTRATUFs, and a full-brimmed rain hat, I expect I am pretty invincible, or at least water-proof. My foulies take up as much space in my bag as all of my other clothing combined, so we know what part of the trip I’m most excited for.

I will brief you next time on the details of the voyage and as much as I know of what to expect of the trip, but for now I have some sleeping to do in a very comfortable Jenks bed.

My hair is still pink and a little bit shorter than last week. What began as three distinct colors (a mid-teens punk rock layering of purple, orange, and red) is now an example of human tie-dying. If done by a third grader who favors pink.

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Thoughts of Rapture

Posted on February 8, 2011 by mkrauszer

Philosoraptor

This is an attempt to propel myself into the mentality of writing. I have a paper due in twelve hours. I have half a sentence and a stream of quotes written thus far. To get the creative juices flowing, I shall brain-dump about the classroom and classmates around me. Brief interjections of brainstorming for my essay may appear, but may be ignored (unless you have read “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, know anything about the decolonization and attempted economic globalization of the Caribbean islands, or watch a lot of documentaries.)

Classroom Observation #1: White board doodle.

Creativity is a dragon, a UFO, a meteor, UV rays, water cannons, a narwhal, word bubbles, the Corwith Cramer, and a force shield. This image is not, however, a unique one.  For all its seemingly random assemblage of characters/images/symbols, is there not a common theme to the study room white/black board fantastical frame? I swear every such “can’t think” creation I’ve seen has followed this similar form: an image of the very subject or idea you are trying avoid and then an entourage of calamities and impossibilities. The alien spacecraft is a standard. The large reptile is a must (often Godzilla or some form of play on the man’yōgana monster relating to your doodle’s theme). And each of these images comes bearing a back-story, an element of popular knowledge that makes them acceptable if not expected contributions to the “random” compilation. Similar to the power of the internet meme, or the retelling of well-known stories in Greek literature, allusion prevails as the dominant determinant of human creation, communication, and humor.

Enter thoughts on allusion:

It’s the reason all Middle English literature is packed with Christian imagery. It’s why Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, hipsterhitler, and xkcd comics are so successful. Allusion plays upon the common understandings of a particular culture/subculture/social group, either by retelling them as a support to a new idea (Billy Joel) or inverting them for the poignant and guaranteed shock of it (hipsterhitler). Using popular allusion ensures a certain kind of response from your audience, assuming they have the same understanding of the event or idea to which you allude.

http://xkcd.com/123/

Allusion also seems to serve as a socially dividing and distilling mechanism. Xkcd.com, for example, is a “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”. Many of the comics require a certain understanding or at least exposure to subjects like physics, math, or computer science. If you don’t get these topics, you probably won’t get these comics. In this way, the device of allusion distinguishes between those who are ‘in’ and those who are ‘out’ of this particular group. Understanding becomes the social capital of  the allusion-driven space. Instead of needing to look the same or act the same, people can rally around knowing the same stuff. Social media, like facebook walls and twitter feeds, allow these selective allusions to be circulated among established groups, strengthening connections based on arrogance of understanding and expulsion of “outsiders”.

This concept is in no way new. Greek literature, as mentioned above, mostly retold stories that had been passed through popular knowledge by word of mouth. Authors simply reworked common cultural understandings into new stories, using allusion to legitimize their medium and support their message. This form of in-clan connection was crucial for a society which thrived from stanch exclusion of and battle with the “other”.

So, basically what this train of thought just showed me is that people will make people different even if they are not inherently different, proving that the human need to distinguish and discriminate transcends visual distinctions like race and gender and age, even ideological and abstract differences like religion and culture and orientation. Humans need difference, not for its beneficial pluralistic contribution to the overall productivity and health of the species, but to sort out who is can come in the clubhouse and who can’t.

The next question, I suppose, is why can’t we make a clubhouse with enough seating for everyone?

Probably something about the need for deep human connection that requires too much time and effort to make it practical to meet and greet the entire race and still achieve meaningful relationship in a single lifetime. Wouldn’t that be ironic, If our need for closeness with a few dictated a distance from a majority, which we happened to select based on difference. I suppose spatially it makes sense.

It is really alarming how long I have been sitting here and how little I have written (on the real paper). Organizing and beginning are truly the hardest parts. Maybe I’ll throw some philosoraptor in on these Caribbean islands and see what she can do.

I only responded to one classroom observation, but I think that’s really all I have time for right now. Stay tuned, I owe you another blog this week, mom and dad.

We celebrated a 21st birthday by jumping in the Atlantic at night! I went in twice, of course.

Explanation of the synonyms/slashes included in this blog: one of my shipmates recently called me a “right click in Word”. Which means I just list all the applicable or nearly applicable synonyms in a sentence when I haven’t taken the forethought to chose between them. Human thesaurus. Compliment? I say ‘yes’.

My hair is currently the color of forgotten cotton candy and elementary school lip gloss. AKA pink.

Oh, and that study aboard thing I’m doing…on-land classes end this week! Then I will retire to the Massachusetts home of fellow Logger, Cat Jenks, just long enough to ship all my excess winter gear back to Washington. We will fly to Key West, Florida next week and board the Corwith Cramer in Feb 16. Thus ending all shore (and internet) communication until March 25. Gah! I’ll give you as much time as I can before then, interwebs. And I promise the next blog will be a formal report on the state of things at SEA.

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to Portland!

Posted on February 6, 2011 by mcooley

Last weekend was spent with my good friend Julie in Portland, a trip I’ve been meaning to take for three years now… Part of the reason I came to UPS was that I was so close to both Seattle and Portland, but still hadn’t had a Portland adventure!

Part of the draw to Portland for this particular weekend, besides it being too early for the onslaught of homework, was a Gillian Welch tribute concert with members of the Portland Cello Project. It was an amazing concert and have been listening to Gillian Welch non-stop since my arrival (my apologies to my housemates who suffer through my high-volume wailings of Gillian songs through the walls). And the ladies from the Portland Cello Project who played were entirely too cool… maybe they need another cellist…

And Portland is such a great city to get lost in! Especially on bike… they city has made Portland extremely accessible via bicycle—to the point that driving a car is so frustrating its better to be on a bicycle. I’m happy to see that Tacoma is working hard to make this city more biking accessible, because it really does make the city experience ten times better. And there are so many beautiful community gardens everywhere. It was great to see these green spaces and self-sustaining communities in the midst of this urban jungle.

One of the green spaces Julie and I stumbled upon was the Tryon Community Farm near the Lewis and Clark campus. I swear to you, it’s a fairy-land. There were these beautifully crafted structures around the property including a cob healing arts room, an open communal kitchen, and a stage. A seriously gorgeous space that Julie and I could have spent days on.

And so much youthful energy! Young kids opening up their own food carts and playing music in the streets. I was lucky enough to spend my Sunday afternoon with my friend Luke and two other guys he plays music with. An absolute manian on the upright bass and then a fiddler trained in Turkish styles. So much fun… I’ve never jammed with two other fretless, bowed stringed instruments before and it was some of the most fun I’ve had! Needless to say, the weekend left me satisfied and utterly exhausted. Looking forward to going back!

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