Rewind.

I wish I had slept less, taken a few Econ classes, and majored in Secondary Education, Political Science and Sociology. As it is, I averaged a generous six hours of sleep a night, avoided economics out of some narrow-minded notion that economics and my prime areas of interest don’t meet often enough to require more than an occasional hop on Wikipedia, and majored in History and Journalism (though only after bouncing around in the Anthropology, English, German, International Studies and Psychology departments).

Now, I love the idea of journalism, if one can summon the support and resources to do it right, but I couldn’t sell myself to get a job and couldn’t find a wealthy patron to foot my bills while I followed my heart. And I’ve always been the dorky girl with her nose in a 10-ton history book. I think understanding history is essential and I think it’s criminal the way we teach history to junior high and high school kids—all names and terms and dates, stripping out the richness and relevance. But I’ll say now what I never would have said before: history isn’t where it’s at. I love museums, research, microfilche, dense books that marry politics and economics and social developments all in one thoughtful and illuminating narrative, but I live and breathe and work in the present, and it’s the present and future that trouble and consume me. I can’t fill my head with the past when there’s so much history being made today, most of it disastrous for most of the people (and all of the planet) all of the time. I want to be dirty in the trenches of public policy, not closeted in a library or frustrated by spilling my ink for a publication that sells its content to audiences and its audiences to the highest bidders first, and serves the cause of an informed citizenry second if at all.

Graduation!

Mittermaiers!


Adam looks so hilariously fly in this picture.




I couldn’t keep my hat on to save my life! Evidence…




I was hamming it up for Bernd in the stands, but still… what a ridiculous face! Haha.


Bored stiff.

Graduation party.

Gibetsky.

1) Courtney and I spent four or five hours at the Rathskeller debating American foreign policy, our national security interests and—most depressingly—the sorry state of the public sphere in the United States. We were under the influence of much too much sugar, caffeine and nicotine, and it was great. But now it’s five hours later and I still need to write this paper.

2) My dismaying rant basically went like this... extended over several hours and backed with (much, much) more evidence and more vitriol:

American global strategy changes
When civilian leadership changes
And civilian leadership changes
When the voting public feels SOME WAY about SOMETHING
AND THAT MATTERS!
It matters if Iraq barely registers when a man casts his only vote out of an overblown aversion to gay marriage
And it matters if his neighbor votes with an eye to rehabilitating our image abroad.
IT MATTERS. A LOT.
IT MATTERS WHAT WE ELECT PEOPLE TO CARE ABOUT—whether that’s restricting abortion or remaking Afghanistan!
It matters to troops when their home communities act and think like they’re not at war and it matters to policymakers whether or not the American people demand accountability or write a blank check for endless wars.
And it matters how we discuss foreign policy as a people—how often and how honestly!

IF we are not dying and killing and being bombed out of our homes, IF the electricity cooperates and the water runs clear and cool and drinkable, IF we know we will not pay the billions sunk in faraway wars, IF our interests stop at the end of our driveways or the limits of our school districts as long as our children are K-12, IF our compassion is critically limited by incuriosity, indifference and inattention, IF we have never met an Iraqi or wondered about him, we have denied him a share in our common humanity by not striving to understand and relate, IF we can’t locate Afghanistan on a map, IF the procession of distractions is endless, IF Nicole Richie has a new haircut—why should we care who kills and dies in our names on the other side of the world?

Sometimes I really hate us, honestly.



3) Honestly, sometimes I still date checks “2007.” This may have happened to me today.

4) Did you know if you type “honestly” with your fingers just slightly misplaced on the keyboard, you get “gibestky”? I like it.

Evil.

How should the United States military think about counterinsurgency operations as it moves forward in Afghanistan and the wider GWOT [Global War on Terror]?

Professor Suri! I can’t wrap my head around the immensity of this subject! I want to devote weeks and months and years to digging into it. The answers (if there are any) are always shifting, always evolving. My bedroom is littered with scraps of paper where I’ve recorded miscellaneous thoughts. I have twenty-six journal articles open in Adobe Acrobat, which makes my poor overloaded laptop decidedly unhappy. I have forty books scattered around me, some in my bed and—let me tell you—it was not comfortable trying to sleep on that many books. One or two - no big deal. I rolled over on three or four books as I tried to sleep last night.

I could talk about this subject for hours. But I can’t write about it. Just the act of writing something down assumes a degree of certainty, and the more I read, the more I discuss this, the more I know I don’t know and the more I’m tempted to keep reading and learning more forever. My big problem with academic essays (especially this one) is that I never know when to stop researching, pull my nose out of my books, press ‘pause’ on great discussions, and say, “Okay, I don’t/can’t know everything, but I know enough to write this paper!”


I am all about learning and digging. I'm all about that part of the process. I'm not sure I can produce any kind of polished, finished document on this subject that I won't want to tear to pieces immediately for its ignorance and shallowness and necessary incompleteness!

Party pooper, I said.

I know quiet hours start at midnight, but that doesn't mean that you need to get drunk right underneath my window and blast god-awful rap music and scream drunkenly for three hours (with no end in sight) right now. Some of us actually have exams tomorrow morning. Early tomorrow morning. Exams we have not had time to study for or even think about because of other claims on our time. I am reading about Kang Youwei and trying to remember why I care about Kang Youwei, and this passage leaps out at me for some reason: "The Empress Dowager ended the 100 Days reforms and ordered Kang executed through death by a thousand cuts." The thought of ordering death by a thousand cuts holds strange appeal at the moment. I can't explain it.

I need to stop nodding off in Brit Lit... it's dangerous.

TA: So, let’s go to... Sarah for the definition of “sublime” as given by the Professor in class…

Me: Wow. This is sad. I have... um... Sublime. The Prof contrasted its power to move the subject with beauty’s power to charm… that’s a quote from Immanuel Kant… and then I just have some dirty lyrics from the, uh, from Monty Python’s, um, philosopher drinking song… You know… Immanuel Kant was a real…uh, philosopher.”

Come on, you know the song…
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could drink you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietszche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist;
Socrates himself was permanently pissed…