An Update (!)

Life has been relatively good in New Jersey. As is always the case, I've got the suite more or less to myself on weekends. Ralph's working at the hospital for $18/hour, Mike Wells is with his high school girlfriend about 45 minutes from here, Tyler's with his high school girlfriend next door (they don't come out much), and Mike S (the one that does karate) is in New Orleans doing, well, karate. The highlights of my weekend have been sleeping 12 hours Friday night after Seton Hall's 3rd straight Big East basketball win (!), going into town this evening to buy some much needed items (was almost out of shampoo, decided to start taking a daily vitamin), and finding 10-12 sources for a paper I will eventually write about Pope Boniface VIII's struggle With King Philip IV the Fair of France over the relationship between religious and secular authority in Europe in in the Medieval ages. Overall my weekend has been much less productive than last weekend, but I also don't have 2 somewhat majors tests occurring this week so it balances out.

For this upcoming week there's not a whole lot going on with classes (we'll have them. There will be Russian vocabulary quizzes. Life will go on). One semi-update in my social life is I'm now in the habit of eating lunches with people (God, even I am beginning to be bored by this blog. And you people wonder why I don't update more). After Honors (Tuesdays and Thursdays) for the last 2 or 3 class periods I've gone to lunch with guys from the class who haven't made appearances on this blog before. One's name is Matt (he's undecided as to a major), Chris Cagna (Criminal Justice major, according to Dr. Booth one of the smartest kids in the honors class last semester with me), and sometimes Charles (African American, Bio Major, Pre Med) and Madhu (Indian, from Tennessee, Diplo major). These lunches have basically involved all the aforementioned, including me, bashing honors for 30-45 minutes. Our honors class is really rather funny. Let me explain.

Last semester, Dr. Booth and Dr. Stark (or, as we refer to them, Freddie and Judy) were our Honors instructors for the Ancient World (Dr. Booth is the Chair of the Classic's department and Dr. Stark is in the Philosophy Department). Class discussions were relatively involved, and it always felt like we were sort of going somewhere. They shared the workload really well, and even if I sometimes shook my head at the content of the class ("how much do we have to read?!") it wasn't a terrible terrible experience. I liked other classes worse. This semester, however, there has been, let's say, a change.

Dr. Peter Ahr (the Honors Program director) teaches this semester's Honors class. Technically Dr. Ines Murzaku (religious studies) is also in the room, but she says, literally, about 5-6 sentences over the course of a 150 minute class (I'm not exaggerating at all. I can provide names of people in the class for verification if requested). This semester we've been told it's important to look at how the people in the texts looked at the world around them, which is fine. But we have this inane... let me give an example. About four class periods ago, we spent, literally, no exaggeration, 45 minutes inferring information from a Chinese rice bowl from the 14th century. Dr. Ahr asks questions and the answer is basically whatever he says it is. There's no progression of the discussion. Typical class exchange: Dr. Ahr, "*Question*", Liam "Answer", Dr. Ahr "Why", Dan "Different Answer", Dr. Ahr "Okay, but why", Matt "Different answer still", Dr. Ahr "No", Kholood "Another answer", Dr. Ahr "Tell me more", Chris "Another answer", Dr. Ahr "Why"... this will continue for literally 5-10 minutes until Dr. Ahr finally decides somebody is right. Occasionally, Dr. Ahr will tell us to "talk amongst ourselves" for five minutes when I'll turn to look at Madhu, Matt, and Charles and confirm that really nobody has any idea what's going on. We've been in class a month now, and I feel like I have absolutely no rapport with either of those instructors. Class discussions devolve into "I wonder what on earth the answer is going to be. Let's all make guesses!" because nobody has any idea what they want. Perhaps this is teaching me to think on a higher level. If it is, it's doing it without my knowledge.

Other than Honors, school has been relatively good. I may or may not be double majoring in Political Science along with International Relations soon. I'm going more and more towards getting a PhD in something politics related. Russian may or may not kill me. My actual International Relations classes (International Conflict and Security, Institutions of Global Governance, and Public International Law) are all excellent and pretty interesting. Dr. He (pronounced "h-uh"), my ICS professor, is in particular interesting. Maybe because it's security studies, which is something that sort of "makes sense" to me, but she does a fabulous job telling us stuff that isn't in the book and just overall running things. It's awesomely fun.

Oh, and back to the lunches point. Mondays and Wednesdays I eat lunch with Mike S. We have a tentative agreement to room together next year if I don't get the Tutor-in-residence thing (you Tutor freshmen that need help 8 hours a week and they pay for your room costs). We talk about sports (Seton Hall and NFL, mainly), classes, various antics, Monique (his girlfriend)'s ass (which he tells me about quite a bit. I smile and nod. Whatever makes you happy dude). Speaking of antics, Monday night was really, really interesting. For some reason, despite the fact that 3 of the 5 suite members have 8:30 AM classes on Tuesday, everybody but me decided to go get White Castle burgers at 1:30 in the morning. At 2:00 AM, Ralph (roommate) and I decided it'd be a good idea to tape their door shut while they were in it. They heard us, ran out of the door, and started shooting silly string into our room. We responded with Lysol, and eventually maple syrup and hand lotion was being flung across the hallway separating the two rooms. It was the most random, fun, "why the hell are we doing this" moment I've had since coming to Seton Hall. Taking the Honors test on 3 1/2 hours of sleep after going to bed at 4:00 AM after cleaning up the hall was less than fun. But it was the most "communal" moment I've had since coming here. I view this as a good thing.

About the TIR, you have to live in a freshman dorm, but still, 8 hours a week for 3.5K/semester isn't bad. I have "group interviews" for that this Friday (I have better than the requisite 3.0 GPA), with "individual interviews" to come next weekend. If that doesn't work out I'm going to attempt to be a desk assistance (minimum wage, but not exactly hard). Unfortunately I missed the application deadline for the tour giving group, but that's what the backup (in this case, backup-backup) plans are for.

In my attempt to get a summer job that's not construction related, I talked to Dr. Martin Edwards in the diplomacy school about possibly doing research over the summer (among other things). He directed me to Seton Hall's SURF (Students Undergraduate Research Fellowships) program, which would pay me $2500 to conduct research on a given topic during July and August. There's an application, of course, and the deadlines for this are due right after spring break, along with a faculty mentor and a two page "research plan". Suffice it to say I've got a lot of work left to do on this, but this actually sounds like a legitimately fun idea for work (since it's something I may or may not spend the rest of my life doing for a living). In my Diplomacy classes right now (in addition to my Medieval Honor's research topic) I'm also going to be conducting research as to how we can solve the problem of landmines killing civilians in the world (thanks for the inspiration, Dr. Rutherford) for IGG and some sort of conflict for ICS that I haven't decided yet (surprise! A research paper about conflict in a class about conflict!). We'll see where that ends up.

Wow, this post turned out to be a lot more productive than I thought it would be. Who knew, right? Normally I'd have some witty way of tying this all together with the title, but there isn't really a "point" to this one. I hope you've enjoyed learning a little bit more about my life. Expect deeper issues as they come up. Thanks for listening.