Daily updates – Page 160 – a sibilant intake of breath

Career and personal planning

While it may seem premature for someone with a year left in a master’s program, I have been thinking a lot lately about what is to follow Oxford. There seem to be two major possibilities, each with numerous sub-options. The first is to proceed directly into a doctoral program, provided I can get accepted. The second is to work.

Keep studying

The possibility of doing a D.Phil at Oxford is not one that appeals to me. While they are shorter than degrees in the United States – probably three years compared to five or six – they don’t include the near-automatic funding that is part of PhD programs at good American schools. Another consideration is the relatively small amount of teaching experience that is usually part of a D.Phil. Applying to work in an academic context, which is one of several possibilities I am considering, would almost certainly require such experience, in the form of a PhD or post-doc. A final consideration that I will mention here is the weak integration between the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford and organizations like the Environment Centre.

For a number of reasons, my top choice for a PhD program at the moment is Columbia. The idea of living in New York is appealing, especially if it would be for such a long period of time, and everyone I’ve spoken to says that Columbia has a good integration between policy and science departments. Naturally, I would need to investigate much more and choose a specific program before applying. Other appealing schools in the United States include MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. Again, I would need to do a lot more investigation before choosing a specific school or program.

The appeal of the PhD option is partly in familiarity. I’ve been in school for twenty consecutive years now, if you count French pre-school. Also, I am concerned that if I go off and do something else, I won’t be able to muster the will to return to academic study.

Work

Work is a much more uncertain prospect. I’ve had a huge number of jobs in my life, all of them fairly menial, I’ve been a janitor, worked in a juice bar, worked as a cashier, sold computers, photocopied and faxed documents for a law firm, worked in a bird sanctuary and for two summer camps, delivered newspapers, conducted telemarketing for a number of charities, done research, soldered components onto circuit boards, assembled and configured computers for an office, sold alcoholic drinks, and served as the subject of scientific experiments. Last summer, I applied unsuccessfully to work at Starbucks. Through all that, I’ve never had a ‘real’ job. By that, I mean a job that I didn’t have the intention of quitting at some pre-specified point in the future. Also, a job with any kind of prospect for advancement.

Fields of interest to me are governmental, quasi-governmental, and journalistic. Examples of each would be working for Environment Canada, the United Nations Environment Program, and The Economist, respectively. I have my doubts about how well I would do in a very bureaucratic context. During the more stressful and frustrating times at Oxford, journalism has seemed an incredibly interesting option. It would allow – indeed require – writing and traveling, and it would probably offer a substantially different perspective on things.

The appeal of the work option is that it would let me try something other than school. It would probably allow me to start paying down whatever level of debt I ultimately take on from Oxford. Also, it would give me a bit more balance and make me feel more equally experienced with the many people in this program who have worked for banks, the UN, or some such place.

Conclusions

I’ve told many people so far about my eight year plan for things I mean to do before I am thirty. The key planks are to finish school, travel to almost everywhere, and write a book. Naturally, there is some tension between the three. Doing a PhD in the right way could allow for all three things to be done. Likewise, leaving formal education at an M.Phil and starting to work for an organization that involves a great deal of travel. All this should be kept at least in the back of my mind over the next year, so I’m not simply left in Vancouver in the summer of 2007, with no plan for what is to follow.

General 4th week update

Amidst Oxford’s volatile spring weather, most of today was spent reading about the Middle East during the periods of 1945-56, 56-89, and 89-present respectively. With four weeks left in my first academic year – and only two weeks left before the research design paper is due – I am feeling an odd combination of the rush of impending deadlines and the calmness of impending summer. Of course, there remain the serious matters of finding employment, and securing a place to live after September.

Within the program, people seem to have hit a definite stride. Thesis anxieties aside, there is a real sense within the group that we understand the Oxford dynamic and are able to deal with it. Having the thesis as an excuse to do not quite as much reading as we might have in previous terms may also have something to do with that.

Since tomorrow is the big seminar day, and I am meant to serve as respondent to Kate Stinson’s presentation about how regional powers in the Middle East may have manipulated international actors, I should get back to my books and the doing of laundry.

PS. What do fellow Oxford bloggers think about 8:00pm on Wednesday the 31st of May for a third gathering?

Warm night

Tonight was the first time this year I’ve walked home at night in short sleeves and felt entirely comfortable doing so. Naturally, it reminded me of all the best times when I’ve been able to wander around in cities on bright, cool nights just after the sun has set: after Judo lessons back in North Vancouver, with Alison and Viktoria in Toronto last summer, and during the summer language bursary program in Montreal. In all those and other cases, I remember the incredible sense of ease that accompanies being free and comfortable in uncrowded streets.

The psychological effect of the pleasing climate is enormous, because it changes the way you feel about being in territory that isn’t under your control. During the icy morning in Chichester, frigid walks in Helsinki, or confused meanderings in London during the winter, I was always plotting where I would get some food, where I could get warm, where I could sleep. This leads to calculations of how long you can linger in a Starbucks with or without buying a drink, what time warm open spaces like malls and bookshops close, and how far you have wandered from the nearest place that you have a key or friend that can yet you into.

Wandering on a warm night, by contrast, projects at least the fiction that all the world is reasonably hospitable: that you can wander almost anywhere with few worries and comfort and adventure are simultaneously possible.

Presentations on Africa and the environment

My mother kindly sent me another book today: Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. I’ve heard a bit about it before, but remember virtually nothing of what was said. As I recall, The Economist was quite critical, but they don’t seem to have a great deal of patience when it comes to a number of alternative views about globalization. Once I finish On the Road and The Skeptical Environmentalist, I look forward to going through it as the next object of discretionary reading.

Aspects of today’s Environment Centre colloquium were quite good. I enjoyed the Vancouverite atmosphere, as well as the presentation by Guardian columnist George Monbiot. Particularly impressive were his historical asides, though his main argument came off as a bit of an afterthought. Spending time with so many people doing environmental studies was a reminder of just how completely outside the discipline I really am. The contrast in the kind of discourse that took place there and the kind in our various seminars was considerable. I’ve never heard the term ‘environmentalisms’ so many times in one day. Some of the presentations struck me as interminably long, lacking in direction, and somewhat pointless: especially one in which the presenter literally skimmed through a 16 page Microsoft Word document he had on screen, correcting the spelling of words as he went, and making general comments about what was written.

The event at Rhodes House was informative but largely unsurprising – except where it was dramatically punctuated by the thunderstorm that materialized as it was ongoing. I had seen two of the speakers before, at a previous Global Environmental Governance seminar, and the presentations they gave were quite similar to those I saw before. I did enjoy the presentation on AIDS by Mandisa Mbali, a Rhodes scholar and organizer of the Stop AIDS Society at Oxford.

Meeting Taylor Owen, a fellow Oxford blogger, both at the Environment Centre event and, subsequently, after the Africa panel was good fun. Speaking with someone else who went to UBC – and who has a number of unexpected connections to Emily as well – is a reminder of how small a place Canada can be.
Likewise, I enjoyed Mandisa Mbali”s presentation on HIV/AIDS: delivered as part of the aforementioned Africa panel at Rhodes House. Tomorrow, I am going to an event being run by the Stop AIDS Society at 8:00pm tomorrow at Hollywell Manor, one of the buildings owned by Balliol College.

Before and after OUSSG

I am going to have to be a bit cryptic tonight. The last six hours or so have demonstrated both how rapidly possibilities that seemed to exist can suddenly disappear, as well as how unknown prospects of different kinds can soon replace them. It may have something to do with the sheer compression of Oxford: compression of space, talent, ideas, ambitions, and interest. The only thing for it is to stick to what you are and your hopes about what you may become.

That, and make sure to invite staggering pairs of relative strangers home for tea, at around midnight on a Tuesday. Therein may lie the redemption of at least a day.

Oxford spring

Living in leafy northern Oxford as everything is coming to life again is quite lovely. Taking a break from working on my paper, I went for a bit of a walk this evening and discovered a whole district of intriguing houses to the northeast of Church Walk: the sort with unusual architecture, big gardens, and streets that are not subject to the indignity of traffic. There were even the semi-circular sweeping rows of connected houses that seemed to be so common in Bath, but which I had not yet seen here. The next time I am ambling with someone, I will try to find the place again.

The best place to experience Oxford in the winter, I think, is the Christ Church Meadow. Walking along the Isis in the chilly wind, looking up at denuded trees which readily reveal the mistletoe colonies inside, there is a sense of pristine desolation. The waterfowl, then, seem like sympathetic fellow victims of the cold and gloom. It isn’t clear to me yet where the embodiment of spring in Oxford will reside, but it may well be in some leafy suburban street, amongst the twittering of birds in the evening.

Tomorrow, I have most of my week’s mandatory activities compressed together over a period of about twelve hours: the core seminar, the Changing Character of War seminar, the research design seminar, the strategic studies dinner, the strategic studies meeting, and the obligatory brief strategic studies foray to The Turf. During that time, perhaps I will meet someone interesting again this week.

Possibly as the result of trying to work on an essay for most of the day (with welcome conversations with Kai and Emily as asides), my brain is feeling a bit like a slightly crushed paper cup: as though it has had too much caffeine or too little, or is trying hard to suppress a relatively mild illness. It doesn’t make me keen on the process of finalizing and editing my Cold War paper tonight, but that’s my own fault for not getting it done earlier. Oxford has definitely been worsening my study skills; work I would have once done well in advance and had checked gets finished at the last minute instead. When the workload is just a series of hurdles and none of your work actually gets graded, the incentives tend towards encouraging such an approach.

Groceries, papers, and PHP

Thanks to Kai’s initiative in driving Shohei and I out to the big Tesco’s near the BMW plant, I now have more food than at any previous point while in the UK. I have five kinds of cheese and even two kinds of tofu. I have my doubts about ‘Beech Smoked’ tofu, but it’s the only kind other than plain I’ve ever seen in Oxford. I’ll publish a verdict on it here later. I also have fruit, vegetables, three kinds of juice, yoghurt, and Nando’s extra-spicy hot sauce. Collectively, it cost more than two weeks of my standard food budget, but there’s a good chance it will hold out that long, while simultaneously providing a more diverse diet than my standard of cheese sandwiches and bean-and-pepper based stir fries.

The big Tesco was utterly awash with expensive organic foods. Indeed, it was hard to find anything genuinely healthy that wasn’t also organic. Personally, I’d much rather have it 10% cheaper and grown with pesticides. While there are real problems of agricultural runoff and such, my scholarship-free self would appreciate some tofu that isn’t ten bucks a kilo.

For Tuesday, I need to finish my first paper for the core seminar. The obvious choices are to write about nuclear deterrence or the end of the Cold War, since they are subjects I already know a bit about. Since Alex recently gave a presentation on the second of those, he might even be able to point me towards some sources once he gets back from the marathon. I was trying to direct miscellaneous universal energy towards Vienna today, during times when I expected him to be running.

So, the attempt at shifting the blog ended up as a desperate three hour struggle to get things back to how they were. I hope that has now been accomplished. I’ve made a full backup and will make another attempt at finishing the migration after I submit my Tuesday essay. With the new banner and colour scheme, I think the WordPress blog looks really sharp.

Second summer day

With Kai at a party in London and Alex in Vienna for the marathon, this is my first night alone in the Church Walk flat. It follows a day that was excellent in many ways. The weather had the same brightness and warmth of yesterday, and it was accompanied nicely by the Feist CD that Jonathan recommended to me, called “Let it Die.” A few weeks will be necessary to really comprehend the style, but I could tell immediately that I like it. Already, the CD strikes me as unusually versatile – with a style that’s hard to pin down. The tone is similarly liable to shift dramatically between songs: from playful to forlorn. I rather like the song in French.

After meeting with Dr. Hurrell and reading in the Wadham MCR for a few hours, I spent the evening walking and conversing with Roz. At one point, we got excellent veggie burgers from a place on Walton Street called Peppers. The smell and clientele reminded me of the Jamaican place across the street from the hostel in Manhattan where I stayed in the days after the blackout in 2003. Their burgers are both very filling and surprisingly tasty, for a vegetarian product in the UK. Given that it’s just a few blocks away and is open late, it risks becoming the Pita Pit of this place of residence (a reference that anyone from UBC should understand).

Earlier, Rosalind and I wandered through Trinity College, which I had previously seen only from the outside, and the Wadham gardens. They have begun to change dramatically, with the coming of sun and longer days. For someone who arrived in Oxford in late September, it’s still something of a surprise to see groups of trees with leaves on them. I am looking forward to a summer of working, cycling, and researching here.

Migration news: geeky stuff

The migration from Blogger to WordPress is going well. I have the colours and formatting on the new blog more or less where I want them. I already much prefer the commenting and management system of WordPress. I just need to come up with a sharp new banner and tweak a few small things. Then, I will shift the WordPress version to the front page. I think I can do so without breaking the links to the old Blogger posts: at least until Google indexes them on the basis of their new permalinks.

Now that I am getting used to it a bit, I prefer the cleaner lines and overall layout of the new blog, as well as the greater versatility of the content management system.

Between the 20th and 24th of June, the Oxford Playhouse is staging Paradise Lost. I shall make a point of going. Roz says that she is also keen to come, if she hasn’t headed off to Rome for the summer by that point.
Tomorrow afternoon is the first OUSSG executive meeting, meant to sort out what to do about the dinners this term. It will be good to finally meet the rest of both the new and old executive in a context meant for planning.
I got a quartet of very diverse fictional books from a free box in Nuffield that Margaret directed me towards, when I was waiting for my supervision. I’ll have a look through them in the summer.

Long summer bike ride

Happy Birthday Greg Polakoff

Today was unambiguously the first summery day in Oxford. As seemed to befit it, I went on my longest bike ride so far: 42.6km from Oxford to Blenheim Palace and Woodstock, then back via Kidlington. I’ve heard that Blenheim Palace and gardens are really nice, but I definitely wasn’t willing to pay eleven Pounds to get in. Instead, I found a shady spot outside Woodstock and read Kerouac’s On the Road for a few hours. While sitting in the shade, molested but unbitten by flies, I actually saw what I can only conclude was a pheasant: a big, red, darting sort of bird that ran off and hid when I tried to photograph it. I also saw huge numbers of cow, sheep, and horses – as well as rabbits and lots of birds.

After leaving Woodstock, I found the road between Kidlington (which is on the way to Oxford) and Deddington (which I walked to one night). Once I realized that Deddington was a further nine miles from where I found that road, I veered off eastwards and found the much smaller town of Tackley. Throughout the ride, there was nice countryside. It would have been perfect but for the strangely insistent sun and the truck that caused me to slam my hand against a metal fence by not signaling when it was exiting from a roundabout. If I hadn’t checked, it would have been overall splattering from under-correction, rather than one nasty bang from over-correction.

I am enjoying On the Road. It has what I would call a Catcher in the Rye narrator: someone focused on being self-sufficient, somehow outside the system, but still caring and generous. The book makes me want to take another road trip in the US.

Instead, I should spend the rest of tonight burnishing thesis ideas for presentation to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow.

Caffeinated jitters

Happy Birthday Ashley Thorvaldson

Today was dominated by core seminar reading, catching up on The Economist, and playing around with WordPress. This term is odd in the sense that there are so few times during the week when members of the program are brought together for academic purposes. We have both the core seminar and the methods seminar on Tuesdays, with no seminars or labs taking place at other times. I do see some program members through the Strategic Studies Group, but that is on Tuesdays as well. I should find someone who is interested in once-weekly coffee and breakfast meetings to discuss academic matters.

Tuesday’s core seminar is on the topics “Compare and contrast the American, Soviet, and European conceptions of détente during the 1970s” and “What were the most important factors that led to the end of the Cold War?” I’ve done some reading already, and will devote a good fraction of tomorrow to immersion in the social sciences library. Because of how early in the research process my thesis presentation will be, it will probably me markedly less useful than it might have been later on. I suppose its value may lie in it being a spur forcing me to think about some of the important questions earlier than I might otherwise have done.

This blog is a-movin’

After another long outage yesterday, I burn with the desire to move beyond Blogger. My experience there have been a progressively more emancipated one, as I got my own domain and learned how to use it. The biggest limitation of all, of course, is that all the content management is still being done on the Blogger side. There are advantages to that – I can’t really break Blogger – and disadvantages – I can’t tweak or fix it either. Of course, moving again means the whole rigamarole of broken links and hopeless search engine results for another few months. It was a mistake to give Blogger control of the root directory of my webspace. It will make the process of relocating trickier than it would otherwise have been.

A draft version of the new sibilant intake of breath as managed through WordPress 2.0.2 is online. I obviously need to tweak the template, as well as deal with some internal changes. Once finished, it will probably replace the Blogger based blog as my primary avenue for posting. I expect that with some learning and tweaking, it will be much snazzier.

For the moment, I will carry on updating both. A facelift and database shift for elements of the cryptoblog may also be in the offing, in the longer term.

PS. Those who haven’t seen it yet should watch the video of Stephen Colbert addressing the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner should make a point of doing so. It’s an astonishing demonstration of someone using satire to speak truth (or truthiness) to power. It’s especially remarkable that the President and others were actually present for it. (Small Quicktime version)