Abalone

I feel like I am at the end of an exhausting week, although it is the beginning.  But I have at least one funny thing to write about.

For my statistics class, I have to write a 6-8 page paper using quantitative analysis.  We were given several datasets to chose from, covering topics such as forest fires in Portugal, world data from 1998, and wine.  Unlike my colleagues, who have chosen to write on topics such as the relationship between GDP and cell phone usage in oil-producing countries or inflation and economic indicators in developing countries, I have chosen to write about the abalone, a mollusk also known as the ear-shell, sea ear, or muttonfish.  My paper will explore whether the abalone's physical characteristics (such as length and weight) are useful in predicting its age.  This is relevant because the current method used to predict an abalone's age is to cut it open and count the rings in its shell, or something like that, described by the author of the data-set as a "boring and time-consuming task."  So, in sum, my findings might be life-saving for the abalone.

Despite how interesting all of this may sound, in class on Saturday morning, I started to wonder why I had chosen this dataset.  My rationale had been that this data would allow me to run a certain type of test that I am interested in learning how to run.  I won't go into great detail about that, but being able to use this particular statistical tool will very likely be useful for me in the future.  Beyond that, the abalone data is also pretty straightforward and easy to work with.  But when all of my classmates were discussing their reasonable, international-related topics, and I was thinking about how I might be able to use this paper to get a job with a wildlife-related organization in Tazmania, I started to doubt my rationale.  However, my group, with the help of my professor came up with a title for my paper: "Save the Mollusk: New Approaches to Age Determination," which was somewhat encouraging.  It got a bit ridiculous...one of my classmates suggested that I read the Declaration of Human Rights as a preface to my paper presentation, and we had a few laughs.  But, encouragingly, my professor also told me that she thought my rationale for choosing the abalone dataset made perfect sense (and that she liked my jacket).  So that's that...while I write my education paper on peace education in refugee camps in Kenya, I will also be working on a paper on abalone age determination.  It's probably good to mix things up occasionally...

falafel

Writing often feels like wading through something, since there are so many things I could make more concrete through writing and I never know where to start, although I often do, at least vaguely.  But I don't like making trade-offs.

Well, I am apparently going to Kenya.  Not "apparently" because it's of my own volition, but it still seems very distant and somewhat comic in my head.  I spent a while being sidetracked talking about Kenya with my Swahili language partner on Saturday when we were supposed to be reviewing my homework, and she said things like, bring cookies so the kids will like you and don't be bothered if people are very forward about your height and weight and face and kids run after you yelling, "white person, white person!"  So, yes, Kenya.  I am very excited about the entire thing, and details will be forthcoming.

I have been struggling lately to manage a massive amount of content--my work-study job at Manual High School where I am ferociously trying to coordinate and organize people...my coursework which demands hundreds of pages of reading and my active engagement...my going to the gym and concern for my legs...Swahili...planning for summer 2012...my internship which demands patience and commitment...and my trying, trying, trying to stay sane and in touch and at peace.

Also, when Condoleezza (two z's) Rice was here, I saw her sitting on a couch outside of a classroom brushing her hair.  Maybe I should do that too.  She talked about the anxiety associated with starting your career--you find fault in most of what you do and find very little measurable evidence that you're doing anything right.  Not to sound so depressive, but I feel that way very frequently here.  Every professor I have is different, and when I pressure myself so often to be successful in that person's eyes, it mostly backfires.  It seems that being a "graduate student" demands high quality in everything, and it's hard to feel that I can always deliver that.  I just worry about it frequently.  And I need to remember to always have people first.

So, there's that.  I am at peace in some ways but overwhelmed in many others.  Now off to wrapping up some work, intently, so I can read before I go to sleep and happily manage the week, maybe eat some falafel.

no exercise

It is (somewhat) remarkable, the self control it takes for me to rest from exercise.  I've had age-old pain in my right knee lately, and when I got sick last week, proclaimed a week-long rest, something very difficult for me to do.  But I resumed exercising after three days, thinking a 6-mile walk would be safe, and the pain came back.  I've tried low-impact activities, and it persists.  So...I am promising myself this time to rest for a week and am building in accountability by writing it here.  This is going to be difficult!!  One thing I've thought about doing is to keep up other activities that will allow me to "stay in touch" with what's going on in my body.  Yoga is very helpful that way, and will, if done correctly, help to heal the injury (at least that's my theory).  But okay, starting tomorrow, no exercise for a week, and then I'll re-assess.

Blegh.

Tonight I met with one of my professors who has a framed picture of herself and Condoleeza Rice in her office.  And on that note..Condoleeza Rice, who is also an alum of my school, is visiting for two weeks in April!  I mentioned my interest and excitement to my professor, and she referred to the photo, saying, "Oh yes, just two girls hanging out."  She laughed and went on to talk about how Condi really plays it close to the chest. 

I don't intend to write about political things on this blog, but I do have to say that I am at least very interested in Condoleeza Rice.  I respect her mostly because she understands diplomacy and can tap into conflict resolution language when necessary.  She also seems to have an ability to connect with certain people (and really not with others) across cultures.  And she understand the purpose of justifying her policy decisions in terms of theory and real constraints.

So I am very excited that she's going to be here, but I'm still unsure of what my role will be in that situation.  She's supposed to visit classes and give talks and interact with students and whatnot, but I'm not sure what I would really say to her if I accidentally ran into her in the stairwell.  Because sometimes I'm more interested in her because of her uncanny ability to function at a high-level: i.e., wake up at 5 in the morning to exercise, play grand piano with Yo-Yo Ma, and talk back to Dick Cheney.  And that just makes me want to say: how do you do it?  Although, I'm also interested in her ability to function in situations of crisis, which is something that fascinates me.  As someone easily affected by stress, I find that I function remarkably well in high pressure.  In fact, I love it.  It brings out something very decisive in me that I don't often find.

But, yes, Condi's coming, and I'm, er, excited. 

what?

I feel like a lot of important things/thoughts have been happening, and I can't keep up with them, although I suppose I always feel that way.  On the one hand, I do so many things every day that it's hard to remember how everything felt or what happened sometimes.  Like just leaving my house and dodging icy, wet patches on the road--so instead I end up thinking about this time my co-worker Steve showed me to how to run barefoot on the UNC football field last year.  Very random.

But I've also been struggling with a lot of ideas about my entire career path.  Not that I imagine changing it, but, for example--I've just begun an internship with an organization called Project Education Sudan where I will be working with a team to develop a leadership program for girls at an all girls' school in the Jonglei State in South Sudan, which has been experiencing a dramatic upsurge in violence.  I'm working on the "student government/conflict resolution" component of the program, and it just seems so very ridiculous sometimes to plan a program for girls who are very far away from me, not only in terms of distance but probably culturally as well.  I mentioned this to one of my team members, Noelle, today, and she said something to the effect of, "Well, kids are kids everywhere." 

Anyway, I have a problem accepting statements like that and just moving on.  I'm co-facilitating a workshop on Cultural Competency for a conference in a few weeks, and the basic point is, "It's more complicated than that."

Beyond that, I am continuing with my work study job at Manual High School "leading" undergrads as they coach high school students through a service-learning curriculum.  On Friday, we discussed the Martin Luther King "marade," (a march/parade in Denver on MLK day, and the largest in the country) and a lot of students dropped comments like, "People will be racist for another 100 years probably" and "They will always have stereotypes of us."  So what do you do with that?  My team had a naturally academic response, thinking that we could take such comments and help the students to process them and make them more concrete and then realize how they could make change in their communities...somehow.  But thinking critically about it for very long made me feel like having a discussion about racism and stereotypes will just make it more apparent how correct they are.  Yet, at the same time, I know how incorrect they are, and I know, emotionally, to focus on that idealistic incorrectness, but...how do you approach a group of high school students who "get it" with issues such as racism and stereotyping positively?

Then, when my Swahili language partner, who is from Kenya, asked me why I wanted to learn Swahili, I felt so simple when I explained to her that, probably like every other American she had met, I wanted to work with an NGO in eastern/sub-Saharan Africa.  It seemed so unfair to have to give such a brief answer to this woman.  I wanted to talk about how it's weird for Teach for America volunteers to be all over Mississippi, even though it's no where comparable to African countries, but it must feel strange for people, and Americans specifically, to constantly want to help your country and its neighbors.  I know that's not the perspective I bring to the table but it's hard to convey such nuance in an introduction.  Anyway, this morning Isabella, my language partner, posted a link to our Swahili blog to an article about Africa's images, in response to some of our introductions about wanting to work in Africa.  I hope that I can talk to her about the article, at least.  I want to just say, "I get it," but at the same time, I know I don't and can't.

Last night, at a poetry slam event called Cafe Cultura (which aims to promote healing for indigenous peoples through self-expression, etc.), a woman from Indonesia read a poem that she said was inspired by "explaining immigration policy to 300 white people at an Occupy Denver event."  And I just thought...really??  Say it differently. 

On another sort of note, I facilitated a brief training on conflict resolution for my undergraduate peers this week.  It was very well received--I had the students work through a conflict scenario and they had very engaged but different responses.  I wanted to facilitate a discussion about their reactions, but I didn't have time.  Anyway, it was a very good experience.

Ah, I feel so busy--school, Manual, Sudan, Swahili, internships, French, my future, peace--but the thought of writing reminds me of a large empty wooden bowl that I can fill up and then empty.  I will work on expressing that more eloquently.  Eloquent is often all I want to be.