Goings-on at the beginning of the second semester

It’s 2:45 p.m., and I’m sitting in a sunny “quiet study area” of Tisch Library.  I should be reading law cases for my “Land Use Planning” class, but I feel, instead, the urge to write up some sort of entry for haskinphoto.  Partly it has to do with photos I’ve seen in my contacts’ photostreams on Flickr, where so many of them seem to have friends around for dinner and things like that.  Truth be told – and this is silly – I’m feeling lonely.  It’s silly, because I have at least one very good friend in Boston, with whom I live, Angus is on the other end of email frequently (though less frequently when he’s in Angola, as he is now), Mom and Graham are in frequent text contact, and I have several getting-better friends at Tufts who I see regularly.  But I am missing my Reedie friends.  I haven’t seen many of you in months or, in some cases, years, and all of the sudden it’s feeling like a very long time.  I miss you, all of you, even the ones that I haven’t spoken with since September or before.

Alright, enough moping.  What else am I up to, I hear you cry?  Well, I’m glad you asked!  I’m taking four classes this semester, and have now had each of them at least once.  It’s going to be an interesting semester, I think, and fairly well balanced between the left and right sides of my brain.  For the math\analytical side, I have Introduction to GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and, horror of horrors, statistics (called “Quantitative Reasoning,” for some reason).  GIS is going to be really interesting, and not too taxing for my poor math-shy brain, but I’m terribly afraid that Quant is going to kick my rear.  Ah well – that’s why I went back to school, right?

For the more word-oriented side of my brain, I have the above-mentioned Land Use Planning II: Regulatory Approaches.  It’s taught by a lawyer, and, pleasingly, only has law cases for weekly readings.  I say “pleasingly” because I found last semester that I really enjoy reading cases.  The weirder, me.  This class will test that inclination, however – with six or more cases to read per week, we’ll see if I really do like it as much as I think I do!

Finally, for practical skills, I’m in Field Projects.  This is a required course, where teams of five and six people from the first-year UEP students work with real-live clients (in my group’s case, Groundworks Somerville) on specified projects.  My group is going to be looking into the demand for uber-local produce – i.e. produce from urban\backyard gardeners in Somerville – amongst local businesses, to see if we can’t facilitate the flow of excess produce from those gardeners to the businesses that want them.  I think the project is going to be very interesting, and certainly it’s good practice for me to work in a group, since I tend to prefer to work on my own (I work better that way, usually).

I will also continue to work for the Medford Chamber of Commerce this semester, although for only ten hours per week instead of the fourteen of last week.  That may not seem like a big change, but given that Field Projects, by most second-years’ accounts, takes as much work as one and a half to two classes, and given that I’m already taking a full courseload, even an extra four hours per week will be beneficial.  I like working at the MCC – Cheryl, the director, is a lot of fun to work with, and I have skills to offer that are very necessary, which makes me feel nice and appreciated.

I will also be spending a fair amount of time this semester applying for summer internships – I’ve already been rejected by one – and thinking about ideas for next year’s thesis.  And I’m going to try to get out at least once a week to do something non-brain-oriented, like swing dancing or, as is the case this week, ice skating.  At the end of February, there’s a UEP trip to the Loj, the Tufts cabin in VT (NH?), which I’m looking forward to.  Even if it is just another place to study!  :-)

So, yeah, I should get back to work.  I’ll be thinking of all of my friends in many of my spare moments, and hope to see some of you before too many more months pass by.  Good luck with all of your endeavors!