Orienatation-ing, etc.

Hello everyone, from my surprisingly-green room in Boston!  Sorry that I haven’t updated before now - things have been quite busy, as you might expect.  I arrived into Boston last Monday afternoon, and was SO happy to be greeted by Jaime and another of my housemates, Justin, who had kindly offered to drive to the airport to pick me (and my luggage) up and take us home.  Not having to deal with my luggage on the T was just about the nicest thing I could have asked for in a welcome!

Tuesday started orientation-ing, with a maths refresher course.  I had been quite worried about this, because (as I’m sure you’re well aware) my maths skills generally suck.  But the course was really easy - I even found an error in the answer key for our problem set for the day, which was the first time in my life that my maths answer, upon not agreeing with the answer key, has been the correct one.  And the teacher assured us that the maths necessary for the econ course, at least, would be no more difficult than what we had done in class.

After the maths, it was time for Tufts’ graduate student orientation, which was, well, truthfully, not that interesting.  It was the usual “bigwigs of the school standing in front of a microphone telling all us grad students that we’re entering the best years of our lives” type of orientation.  Although one thing of note was mentioned, which is that those who participate in the Tufts President’s marathon team don’t have to pass the entrance time for the Boston Marathon.  As I haven’t a chance in hell of running a marathon in the time that the B.M. wants for entrance, I had kinda written it off, but now… it’s on the list of possibilities for next year.  (Doh!)

Graham arrived on Wednesday, and has been very kindly helping me paint my room for a number of hours over the last few days.  I chose a color that seemed like a nice, rich-but-soft greeny-blue off the color chips; there were no samples to be had, so I just went ahead and bit the bullet and bought enough to properly paint the room.  Sadly, when first being put on the walls, the color turned out to be something between electric shamrock and slightly-darker-than-oompa-loompa-hair.  ::sigh::  It has darkened and mellowed with a second coat and drying, but it’s still much more, um, vibrant than I had intended.  Ah well.  I’ll live with it. 

Thursday was the UEP (my program) orientation, which was much more to the point.  All us first-years had to go around and introduce ourselves, and it’s nice to be surrounded by people who seem passionate about generally the same topics as me, or, really, who are passionate, period.  I also got to meet Laurie, who is a professor in the program, a Reed alumna, and who, it turns out, was born in Mineral Wells, Texas.  (The ice-breaking activity was to organize ourselves in a big circle by increasing distance of birthplace from Tufts - I was the furthest away of the three Texans.)

On Friday, a few of the second-year UEP students also gave an orientation for the first years, which was actually more useful, in many ways, than the official orientation.  It also gave me an opportunity to catch up with Jeremy, another Reed alum who graduated the same year as me.  Reedies are everywhere - Jeremy, Laurie, and my advisor’s husband, all in or related to a small program! :-)

After the orientation on Thursday, first-years met with our advisors and signed up for classes.  My advisor, Rachel, suggested that I sign up for more than the standard four classes, then drop one before the five-week drop point.  So I have.  The two required courses for this semester are: Foundations in Public Policy and Planning, and Economics for Public Policy and Planning.  The other three courses for which I have registered are: Environmental Law; Cities in Space, Time and Place; and Developing Sustainable Communities.  I’m guessing that the second of the three will be the one that’s dropped, because it’s a required course and I will therefore be able to take it next year.  But we shall see.

This weekend, Graham and I went down to King Richard’s Fayre, specifically to try to find the vendor who had made the leather bracer that Graham bought there seven years ago and which, through constant wear, has become a bit… worn.  The vendor wasn’t there, but we found another leather worker who says that he can mend the straps on the one Graham has, which are the parts that are falling to bits, so overall the day was a success.  I’m glad that I won’t be driving on a regular basis in Boston/Massachusetts, though - it was nerve-wracking, and the traffic wasn’t even that bad.

Today, after a quick trip to the farmer’s market in Central Square, I’m going to start in on the required reading for my classes tomorrow.  This evening, our relatives out in Lexington are having us over for dinner, and to give me a chest of drawers and a desk lamp.  Now I just need a desk….

Back in Boston

Apart from an extremely rough patch coming into Boston yesterday, the flights were uneventful and blessedly un-full.  I arrived, and Jaime met me, along with another new housemate, Justin, who was kind enough to bring his car!  I nearly cried from relief - I had NOT been looking forward to lugging my luggage on the T, even with Jaime’s help.  Boston had put on its finest weather - 70-ish, breezy, sunny, perfect - and Jaime and I spent the evening wandering up to Harvard Square (where a guy at the Chipotle Grill thought I was British from my accent, which surprised both me and Jaime), and back down via Central Square, reacquainting me with the local area.  Then I went to Walgreens and got completely overwhelmed by the forty-choices-for-the-smallest-item situation; upon my eventual return, I took a much-needed and highly-refreshing shower, then flopped into bed at the respectable hour of 10 p.m.

I woke up at 6:30 this morning,but other than that, jet lag doesn’t seem to have bothered me too much yet.  And now I am going to get a few things together, have some breakfast, and then go off to the first event of my grad school career - a bloody maths refresher course.  I can’t TELL you how excited I am about this.  Ah well, though - it’s only a few hours of my life, and if it enables me to re-remember how to add, subtract, and reduce fractions, well, it will be good.  There’s an informal orientation later today, and this evening Uncle Denis has said he’ll come help me move a mattress from whichever store I buy it in to the apartment.  Jaime has offered to help me repaint the room I’ll be living in tomorrow morning, which is good, ‘cause it needs it.  And then tomorrow midday, Graham arrives!  Hooray!

My knight(ess) in shining cotton

Angus and I were driving a huge load of my extraneous crud to a charity shop in town this afternoon.  There is a certain set of traffic lights - three in succession - that are almost always completely backed up.  They work as a funnel, so that the first one (which has three lanes) feeds into the second (which only has two lanes), which feeds VERY shortly into the third (which only has one lane).  As a result, the left-hand lane is almost always backed up a long ways leading into the first set of lights - usually to a 0th set of lights, in fact.  Today was one of those days, as it turns out that Gloucester RFC had its first match of the season this afternoon (they lost).

I slowly worked my way up to the first set of lights in the lefthand lane, but was forced to stop (despite a green light) because there was no space for me to pull into on the other side of the intersection.  So I very legally and correctly stopped on the near side of the intersection, waiting for either space to appear or the light to go red (the more likely option).  The guy behind me REALLY didn’t like that at all.  He honked.  And honked. And honked again.  And again.  Resolutely I sat.  Finally the light turned red, as both he and I knew it would, and I watched the far side of the intersection clear up as the next set of lights turned green.  (This really is the most horribly-timed set of lights I think I’ve run across in a LONG while.)

While we were sitting, waiting for the light to go green again, I glanced in my rearview mirror.  I was tickled absolutely pink to watch a 70-80-year-old-woman walk up to the passenger window of the car behind me, tap on the window, and then, once it was down, proceed quite obviously to berate the driver for being so obnoxious.  From the gestures, and what little I could hear of the conversation, it was obvious that he was saying that I should have pulled into the intersection, so that both he and I could have gotten through on that set of lights (never mind the traffic coming into the intersection, which would have been blocked); she was just as obviously saying something to the effect that I had done exactly as I should, and that you aren’t supposed to pull into an intersection unless you can continue out of it without running a light or blocking traffic.  The guy got more and more grumpy looking.

I have no idea who the woman was, but I could have hugged her.  Actually, as I said to Angus, “I want to buy her a milkshake!”  I have no idea why a milkshake seemed an appropriate reward for having the gumption to bawl out someone for being a jackass, but it did.

Finished with that section…

Today was my last day of work at Vision 21.  I have been involved with Vision 21 in some capacity or another since two months after arriving in the U.K., so it feels somewhat momentous to be done with it.  There’s nothing but a week with Angus and a bunch of packing - and a flight or two - standing between me and my arrival in Boston.

... About which I have mixed feelings.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before.  But one thing which occurred to me recently was this: for the majority of the last six years of my life, what I have been doing with my life has been secondary to where I was doing it.  You know, the whole “living abroad” thing put jobs, etc., into shadow.  Now, and for the foreseeable future (though who can foresee very far into the future, really?), I will be living in the US again.  Location will no longer really be all that remarkable, wonderful though Boston is.  For the first time in… well, a very long while… I will be defined by what I choose to do, rather than where.  I haven’t had that kind of definition since I declared my major at Reed, really.

It leaves me feeling uncertain about myself.  I know that I can work hard if I need to or am sufficiently motivated to - three marathons (whatever the effects) have proven that.  And I would like to believe that I can, well, make a difference.  Cheesy though it sounds, I really would like to change the world (even a small bit of it) for the better.  Now starts the time when I have to try and prove that I can.  Prove that… I don’t even really know what I want to prove.  All I know is that I want to prove SOMETHING, something to make me feel a little less like I’m just coasting through life, and more like I’m actually contributing actively, rather than passively, to the general happiness/goodness/wellness of the world.  Does that sound hopelessly naive?  You know, actually, don’t answer that question (those few of you who are reading this).  Even if I end up not being able to make an appreciable difference, I want to know that I tried.  So it doesn’t matter if it’s naive.

Random Reed Reading!

“I planted Rebecca’s bounty in 14 terra cotta pots; my apartment looks as if it majored in liberal arts at Reed.”

In an article on NYTimes about VeggieTrader.com .  Is Reed really that much of a touchstone?

Missing him

Dammit.  For a few, lovely hours, we thought that Angus was going to be able to come home this weekend.  Now it appears that it won’t be until next Wednesday at the earliest.  He and his colleague have to put together a quote/purchase order for another job next year, and to do so they have to figure out exactly how much cable, how many junction boxes, how many little damn cable clips, they are going to need.

It makes me very sad.

Hrm.

Four weeks from right now, I’ll be in Boston.  Mixed feelings about that.

Also, dropped Angus off at the airport a bit ago.  He’s off for a 5-10 day work gig on an offshore platform in Angola.  We don’t know how long it will be in total.  I’ll just be glad when he gets back, unkidnapped!  (I know that Angola is actually a pretty safe place, as far as these things go, but it still makes me nervous.)

Photo I’m proud of…

Oh yeah - and I passed the final portion of my UK driving test yesterday.  So I can now drive by myself, legally!  Woo hoo!

Happy 4th!

To all of my wonderful, much-loved friends and family: I hope that you are having a wonderful, celebratory, warm, pleasantly-full-of-good-food sort of day!  I have done, what with Angus and me hosting a barbeque in our back garden, and I’ve been thinking of all of you throughout the day.

Musical effects

Gods, but I love classical music.  I’m listening to Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 on my iPod while at work, and just the first forty seconds are enough to send chills down my back.  So clear, distant, beautiful, like a winter’s landscape with the sun just about to rise.  Then, at around two minutes, the chills return as the sun bursts into the sky with the brass chorus…

Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 is a rich blue sky filled with towering cumulonimbus clouds – actually, it manages to remind me simultaneously of the Texas Hill Country and a Scandinavian grassland landscape, no mean feat.  But whether Texas or Finland, there is a crisp, fresh breeze embodied in those notes that makes me breathe deeply just to think of it.  That might have something to do with making it my favorite piece of music, given that “blue skies, white clouds, mountains in the distance and breeze rustling the leaves in the trees” pretty much sums up my notion of heaven. 

When I want a sensation pleasantly similar to dropping a bath bomb into my brain, I pop on Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, which fizzes nicely through the crevices. 

For music that never fails to make me tap or fidget some part of my body in time with the music, Tchaikovsky’s “Capricchio Italien” fits the bill.

And on and on goes the list…  Thank you to both my parents for being so kind as to raise my brother and me on classical music!

Hear, hear

“The debate over whether individual actions matter at all continues, but that is not to say there’s no environmental benefit to be had from reducing energy and water consumption.”

A quote from an article on (where else) NY Times highlighting the growing field of “eco-consulting.”  The rest of the article was kinda blah for me, but at least this quote was reasonable.

::sigh::

My brother directed me to this NY Times article about Reed’s current financial woes.  I have to say, one thing that really bothered me was the mention that Reed intends to move forward with plans for a new performing arts centre… on top of all the other new buildings and new land it has built or bought in the last six years.  Could it be that Reed has stretched too far and needs to reel things back in again?  Is a new performing arts centre *really* more important than admitting the best students, regardless of need?  Some of the most brilliant Reedies I’ve ever encountered would not have been allowed to Reed had it been admitting based on lack of need rather than fitness of match. 

I know that I’m over-simplifying, and I know that a new arts centre will be welcomed by the students and teachers who use it most (and, probably, the public that will be brought in to shows).  But I believe that - unless NOT going ahead with it will end up costing more than going ahead with it will - it is more important to maintain Reed’s ethos (second time in two days that I’ve made reference to that) than continue with new buildings.  Reed: Postpone the new build.  Remember that $50,000 is a hell of a lot of money for *anyone* to cover annually, and almost certainly means that more students are financially needy than before.  And remember, while you are agonizing over “protecting the character of the college” (which I do actually believe is important to you), that old and beat-up is as much a part of the Reed character as cutting-edge, if not more.  Prexy will hold for a few more years, as will Kaul and the theatre. 

Changes

In mid-May, the Wall Street Journal asked the presidents of 10 U.S. universities/colleges to answer one question (of the Journal’s choice) from their school’s application.  Colin Diver got stuck with this one:

“A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.”

I found the essay a bit disjointed – the leap from a moment of conflict that happened to have a racial aspect to the musing on diversity didn’t really gel, to my mind.  But that wasn’t really my main problem with the essay.

My main problem can be summed up in five words:

What happened to “Why Reed”?

I’m probably misremembering (as is more often the case the more certain I am about a memory), but I thought the only essay I had to answer for Reed’s application was the “why Reed” one.  It was an introduction to the school’s ethos, succinctly wrapped up in two words.  “Reed is about free thinking, lateral thinking, creativity, individuality.  We’ll demonstrate it by not having the standard set of essay questions to which you can regurgitate a standard answer.  Instead, we will put pressure on you from the very first to think beyond the usual, and to demonstrate your ability to think for yourself, without leading and hand-holding.”

I got my essay back at graduation, as does everyone.  And I’m not sure I would have admitted myself based on what I wrote.  (Thank goodness the admissions team wasn’t made up of me in 1999!)  But still, the “why Reed” question prompted some of the best, most creative responses imaginable in the applicants whose applications I read while working at the admissions office during my senior year.  If the question posed to Colin Diver has supplanted the “why Reed” question, my opinion is that it was a very poor substitution indeed.

20,000 books over the sea

My dreams of late have started to reflect the growing space that moving/grad school/meeting new people is taking up in my mind.  Last night I dreamt about trying desperately not to be late to sign up for classes at Tufts; the night before that, it was all about going to my high school reunion and meeting up with people who knew me as I was in high school, which is to say a very different person than I am now.  As I told my brother recently, I’m not exactly worried about grad school, just conflicted.  I’m sure I’ve said this before, but on the one hand I’m sad about leaving Angus and our home (despite not anticipating missing Gloucester at all), and shocked at how fast the time is going and how little time we have left.  On the other hand, though, I now have a project, a plan, something to DO, and I’m desperate to start it.  I get really antsy if I feel like I know what I want to do but can’t do it right now, and that’s pretty much the situation I find myself in.

Longer-term worries are also on my mind.  Specifically, Portland.  Angus and I intend to move there after I graduate.  In addition to all the worries about whether or not he’ll like it enough to be happy there for a number of years, I worry that things will have changed for me.  Pretty much since I moved there ten years ago, Portland has been home.  No matter how far away I’ve taken myself, Portland has been in my mind daily, and in my heart as this kind of lodestone, somewhere that I’m working my way back to, no matter how circuitously.  Yet I know it’s changing.  I’ve visited a number of times in the years since I first moved to France, and thus far I still have enough in common with it to have the sense of home unchanged.  But what if that’s not the case after grad school?  Two years can do a lot, both to a person and to a city.  I know that this probably seems ridiculous to worry about from an outsider’s perspective, but Portland has been a fixture of my internal landscape for the entirety of my self-aware, semi-adult existence.  The occasional thought that it might be a mirage around which I have constructed a detailed map… well, it worries me.

In more external news, I’m still trying desperately to get through my huge “to read” pile before I leave.  I’ve finished three books in the last week and a half, but it’s still going to be a push to get it all done before the end of August.  I don’t want to have to take too many books to Boston – I intend to mail myself a box of books that might be useful for grad school and to rely on the Boston Public Library for any fun reading that I might have the chance to do.

We took two large boxes – well, a large box and a laundry hamper, really – of books and miscellaneous stuff to a charity shop this last weekend.  That’s my first set of stuff to be getting rid of completely; Jaime took a suitcase-full of things I need for Boston back with her last week, bless her.  I’m trying to consolidate everything I own in the house into my office (clothes excepting), so that I know exactly how much I have to go through and sort.  It’s a struggle; I’ve accumulated so much stuff over the last few years!  That’s one good thing about moving again – owning so much stuff makes me feel twitchy from time to time.  Particularly the books. 

WHY do I own so many books when there are libraries?  And why can’t I bring myself to get rid of more of them?  Even if I limit myself to keeping either signed copies (my Bill Bryson and Jeffrey Sachs and Jasper Fforde) or to copies of books that I read more than once a year (Pride and Prejudice and LOTR and Jane Eyre) or to favorite series (His Dark Materials and Harry Potter and The Dark is Rising and The Fionavar Tapestry and the Thursday Next series) or books that have emotional import for me (i.e. gifts and/or books written by family members and friends)… well, as you can guess, it adds up.

I guess that I could get rid of Harry Potter… and LOTR… But… but… I have matched sets!  (Well, not for LOTR.  In fact, it’s a mammoth, totally unwieldy three-in-one volume, so I have little qualms about getting rid of that.) … You see what I mean?  It’s a genetic problem, as anyone who’s ever been to my mom’s house will testify.  It’s also a potentially-misplaced sense of economy.  I’ve already spent the money to buy these books, so part of me feels like it couldn’t possibly be economically sensible to get rid of them.  It depends on how much international shipping costs, I guess.  ::sigh::  Or I could ask Angus to stick several books into his luggage each time he comes to visit and bring them over little by little…  That might work!  ::shakes herself by the scruff of the mental neck::  If I have Angus bring over too many books, that’s just more stuff to move again in two years, which adds to the real cost of ownership.  I’m always going on about people taking total cost into consideration when considering environmental questions, so why am I not doing so with my books and stuff?  I really, really should cut everything down to those things that are either useful on a daily basis (my clothes) or truly irreplaceable (mementoes, books with emotional/historical import for me, etc.)  Never mind that I have a complete set of English-edition Harry Potters.  I can get the series again, and I’m not a book collector, interested in different editions or covers.  I have books because I read them, by and large!  If I can just as easily read them from a library, what’s the point of owning them?

Books and clothes, books and clothes.  My two main problems, at least as far as moving and living compactly are concerned.  And, as the contradictions in what I have written demonstrate, books are the worst, really.  I feel laden down if I own too many of them, yet I can’t seem to do more than slightly stem my urge to buy them, nor can I easily bring myself to get rid of them once I have them!  Grr.  Argh.

On balance, a good day (yesterday)

Cons: two notifications of rejected grant applications at work

Pros: first blueberries of the year (YUM!!!), bicycling to and from work for the first time in two months, watching a seagull and a magpie gang up on a buzzard that was getting too close to their nests, getting to the hardest gear on my bicycle for a reasonable amount of the ride home (which, admittedly, is mostly sloped very slightly downhill, but still), having lovely steamed salmon with Angus for dinner