Happy Tuesday!

For those of you who were looking forward to more posts with the school year and have been disappointed, I suppose I owe you an explanation...on the condition that you do not panic! : )
Two weekends ago, I smacked my hard pretty hard twice in a row on a kitchen cabinet and then a table. (I am full of grace and poise, what can I say?)
I am okay, but I am suffering a pretty bad concussion. I have an appointment with MSU Neurology sometime this week to try and figure out what is wrong with me and how to get me back on track. So life has been pretty slow and I've been canceling a lot of extracurriculars...thus I have had little to talk about, as most of what I've been doing is sleeping.
Alas.
But life goes on, and I will be totally fine...just take a bit of time to recover!

International Day of Peace

Last night, the Shalom Center for Justice & Peace celebrated the 30th annual International Day of Peace (set up by the United Nations) with an interfaith commemoration of "Voices of Faith & Reason - Compassionate Peace." Local speakers gathered and shared perspectives on global and personal peace. We had some lovely live music as well. For the first time (this is our third year doing an interfaith celebration), campus students outnumbered the older church crowd! Go, MSU!!!

Weekend with the Families

Kevin and I trekked around the state a bit this weekend...Saturday we went to Rochester and got to see his little brother's soccer game. (Josh was goalie in the first half, and we got to see him save several. And then he scored in the second!) Saturday night we celebrated his grandfather's 80th with a big surprise party. I met the entire extended family, pretty much...and there was a baby! :)
Sunday we popped up to Mount Pleasant. Got to hear Papa preach, and then saw the community production of "Rent." A bunch of friends from high school were in it; it was great to see everyone.

ANP 416

Anthropology of Southern Africa is a great class. We run like a book club – read a book a week, come and talk about it. We’re doing theory, gender roles, anecdotes…it’s loads of fun. I got to do a mini-lecture on Marxism.
Good day.

Oh, the revisisions

Good news: MSU will be endorsing me for the Mitchell, Rhodes, and Marshall UK applications.
Bad news: I have SO MUCH revising to do.
SO MUCH.

Makovsky and al-Omari are in town!

Today we have two prominent speakers on campus. They will be holding a discussion on the possible consequences of Palestine's bid for statehood at the UN.

At 7:30, the program will be streamed live at http://wkar.org/live/ivs/.

More info, stolen from the flyer:
“Israeli-Palestinian Peace Prospects: What Comes Next?”
WHY: The current situation between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority is difficult and complicated. Many (including the Obama administration) believe that the next step should be the resumption of direct negotiations between the two parties. Others pin their hopes on a plan by the Palestinian representatives to seek a unilateral declaration of statehood in the United Nations beginning September 20 -- a move controversial even among advocates of a two-state solution as counterproductive and damaging of the prospects for real peace.
WHAT: The “Real Partners. Real Peace” coalition is leading an initiative to bring to campuses across the country informed views on the situation. These forums will feature two experienced observers and participants in Israeli/Palestinian negotiations exploring the implications and consequences of seeking a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state at the UN.

David Makovsky is the Ziegler distinguished fellow and director of The Washington Institute's Project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is co-author with Dennis Ross of Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East.
Ghaith al-Omari is Executive Director at the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). Prior to that, he served within the Palestinian Authority as Director of the International Relations Dept in the Office of the President, and as advisor to former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.


In addition to the evening event, I get to have lunch with them and attend a smaller lecture at 3.

Remembering 9/11

The East Lansing faith communities held a wonderful interfaith commemoration service yesterday. People from Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, and Baha'i traditions shared reflections about 9/11. We packed the Hannah Community Center Auditorium. It was a really great event.
And, in a shout-out to Mum - we opened with "This is My Song!"

Dinner at Yael's

Professor Aronoff - the international relations senior seminar instructor - had the class over for dinner tonight, to encourage everyone to get to know each other. For a few of us, it was a study abroad reunion, as the entire Aronoff family came to Israel with us in summer 2010. So I got to see the kids again (I scored 2 goals on Aidan the soccer champ!) and Yael's dad, who's a blast. (Yes, I also talked with other students. But I get to see them every Tuesday and Thursday, and I see the Aronoff clan much less often.)

Freshman Reunion!

I had lunch with Bailey, Elena, and Chris today. We were very close in freshman year, then I moved off campus and didn't see them quite as much. And last year, Lena spent the entire year in China...so I haven't seen her in a year and a half or so. Reunion time! We had a lot of fun.

Honors College Picnic!

We welcomed the Honors College freshman class to MSU last night with a picnic in the Student Services Garden. All the HC student groups gave a quick intro to what they do and helped provide food. Yay for massive amounts of cookies purchased from Kroger!

Marshall Interview

Interview round 2 today! The committee was a good number of the same folks, actually.
It can be summed up in two words: I cried.
They asked me "Why North Africa and the Middle East?" I told a story about Pink Doll and lost it a little bit.
Granna got a dark-toned baby doll for me when I was like six weeks old. I LOVED that thing; slept with my "Pink Doll" (her PJs were pink) every night. One day when I was about eight, a friend saw her in my room. "Why do you have a BLACK doll?" It was my first real encounter with racism...it did not make me happy.
Anyways, I didn't totally lose control. But the Assistant Dean definitely had to pass me a box of Kleenex.

Interview!

The interview is over. Thrills, thrills.
I contradicted myself a lot...but hey, I'm a philosopher. I'm allowed to. lol. (We were talking about community-based development versus large, grand schemes…I, of course, favor community development, but want to be an Ivory Tower academic and government advisor. Haha.
It went well, I think. Knew a good number of folks in the room. They asked me which I wanted more – the Rhodes or the Mitchell. Oh dear. Decisions, decisions.

Tomorrow are the Marshall interviews...

Rhodes and Mitchell Internal Interviews!

I have my internal interviews for the Rhodes and Mitchell scholarships today. MSU's committee is selecting who MSU will endorse, so we prepare applications ahead of time and do interviews with the group of faculty and staff to help prepare us if we go forward.
Should be a fun time! My applications for the Rhodes and Mitchell are very different, so we'll see if they try to focus on one or another.

ANP 416

Anthropology 416: Anthropology of Southern Africa
This is one of my core courses for the African Studies Specialization. It is taught by the director of the African Studies Center, who’s pretty epic. It will be a good seminar class focused on discussion…reading one book a week and doing a few book reviews will be the only “assignments.”
I love classes that assume students can be students.
The professor was expecting more of us to drop in panic when we saw how many books were on the syllabus...hahaha.

MC 492

Madison 492: Senior Seminar in International Relations - Israeli Foreign Policy
I'm taking a "real" Madison College course with Yael Aronoff, the woman I studied with in Israel. The Senior Seminars are small group courses, focused on discussion. We do a 30-page paper on a topic of our choosing...I think I'll be doing a paper on international water policies.

PHL 330

Philosophy 330 - Formal Reasoning. aka, Logic.
Lots of fun. Learning how to argue properly, and what truly is "logical."
We're playing with St. Anselm's Ontological Argument for the existence of God today:
"God has all perfections.
"Existence is a perfection.
"God exists."

FUN!
The professor is a blast...which is kind of impressive, for a logic instructor.

ANP 202H

ANP 202: Anthropology - Biocultural Evolution. It's one of the core requirements for the Anthro degree. I have delayed taking it because the Honors section kept not fitting in my schedule, and I desperately wanted to take it, because the class sounded so cool.
But, as luck would have it, this semester, the Honors section is being taught by a forensic anthropology. This results in a great bias toward the "bio" side. The instructor for the non-honors section is an epic cultural prof. Alas.
I will be memorizing the human skeleton, along with several other things. Which I suppose will be good for me and potentially useful.
But I was supposed to be having fun learning about how we can see human cultural behaviors emerging in primate groups, not just how our bones came from the monkeys.
Tear.

EC 410

EC 410: Economics in Developing Countries
This course is (you guessed it!) about economic issues in the developing countries of the world. It is going to be a highly quantitative class, focused on a learning a lot of economic models used to explain economic patterns around the world.
I really like the professor (shocking, I know).
And - here's the best part! - instead of taking a final exam, I get to write a case study on a country. And the instructor has already agreed that I can write on the complication that is Israel-Palestine, rather than a strict "country."
Gonna be a good semester. Math! Poverty! Fixing poverty!

The Thumb

This weekend, I had my first experience in "The Thumb." My boyfriend's extended families have vacation houses in the "thumb" of the lower peninsula of Michigan, and we visited all around for Labor Day Weekend. I met his Mom and Stepdad in Lexington, Michigan, where we got to hear the local folk music festival. Then we drove up miles of beautiful Lake Huron shoreline to Port Austin, where we saw his father's extended family. Lots of fun and hilarity was had by all.
Because of the way the United Methodist Church is set up, I have done work almost exclusively in Western Michigan, and the west half of the mitten is the only place Dad has ever had churches. As a result, I've spent relatively little time on the eastern side of the Mitten. So this was my first time in the Thumb...I may be obsessed now, though.

Hello Again!

My apologies for being incredibly MIA over the summer...life was crazy busy. However, I am now happily back into the swing of classes, and I will be once again regularly updating this blog (there should be at least one post a day). So be prepared to be bombarded with ramblings from the life of Becca!