First Paper DONE!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Now off to a Presidential debate watch party!

The Weekend of a PhD student!

The weekend of a PhD student...writing during the day and gettin' social at night. Friday night was ladies night which began with a progressive house hopping, including wine and appetizers, followed by the elusive search for the Athens nightlife scene. But, let me qualify that last sentence by adding that we were in search of the non-undergraduate nightlife scene...no cougars in this crowd! Downtown Athens is divided into the west side (undergrad heaven for those cougars out there) and the east side (where you sometimes find an older crowd). Living in a college town in the middle of small town America doesn't make it easy to meet people over age 25. However, I think we are slowly finding the few "hot spots" that do nurture non-undergrad crowds.

Saturday night was a night of dead cockroaches, American college football, hanging with my work peeps, and beer pong (table tennis without paddles and lots of cups, balls, and beer). One of the guys I work with purchased his first home in Athens, so he threw a housewarming party complete with beer pong in his manly-man shed. Beer pong is a popular American drinking game. The intent is to throw a ping pong into the opponent's cup, whereby the opponents must drink the beer in the cup and remove the cup from the triangle. The winning team eliminates all of the cups of their opponents before their own cups are eliminated. The people I work with are the fun-lovin' student affairs type. For those of you that don't know the student affairs type...well, they put the "F" in F-U-N, they can coordinate an event in their sleep, they aren't afraid to get silly, and others view them as "fluff" of the university. Once you are a student affairs type...it is hard to look the other way.

A Paper Writing Machine!

Leasa's world is now filled with paper-writing (day in & day out!). In my Introduction to U.S. Higher Education class we have to analyze how an U.S. institution of higher education works (organizational structure & governance). The kicker is that we had to choose an institution that we did not have affiliation with, therefore I chose a university I know nothing about...the highly reputable Ivy-league university in the heart of New York City, Columbia University. Did you know that the tuition at Columbia is almost $40K/year? Did you know that Columbia also has the 2nd largest number of foreign students in the U.S.?

The other paper...ugh...social theory! We have to analyze a social theory and I have chosen the market theory. Ya know, the exchange of goods for a price, consumers/producers, market-oriented policy instruments, blah, blah. It is all mushy in my head right now. All I know is that I am a consumer and I need to purchase a massage, as I have a knot in the middle of my back the size of a watermelon. Maybe the government will look at this knot as a market failure and bail me out...like they did AIG. What the hell? Okay, maybe I'm getting a bit off topic...back to writing! 10 more pages to go...

When the Rubber Hits the Dirt!

When the rubber soles of my Adidas trail runners hit the dirt, you know life is good! Yes, I have found a little piece of heaven right here in Athens, Georgia. For awhile I was starting to think my days of hiking would be limited to my dreams of and vacations to Colorado. However, a classmate of mine, Stephanie (who lived in Boulder for a short period of time and also shares the same love of nature), was kind enough to introduce me to the the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia, right here in Athens. Ok, it is not the Rocky Mountains, but it is a beautiful and lush forest with over 5 miles of trails. It is much more than the groomed flower beds that you typically expect when visiting a botanical garden, rather the dirt trails are lined with lush native plants/trees and even a few exotic species. The best part is the wildlife...the first weekend we saw a tiny tree frog perfectly camouflaged with the surrounding flora. The lizard in the photo was smaller than my pinky finger. Here are a few photos from the trail. Notice, that the leaves are starting to change colors. 'Tis the season!

A Palin LOVE-FEST!

Living here in the south, I am very careful when choosing who to engage with in political banter. You never know what you are going to get; a bible belter that wants to change the nation, a right-wing radical, or a conservative who would jump at the chance to convert anything or anyone (especially a liberal democrat from Boulder, CO). I suppose it is a lot like when I was living in Europe, but in Europe I didn't know if I was going to get anti-American sentiment or not. The other day, I was in my office--the one that I share with two other graduate students--and suddenly I was involuntarily in the middle of a Palin LOVE-FEST! The love for Palin was oozing from the pores and reverberating from wall to wall. I quickly zipped up my Obama-lovin' shield and fought off any desire to open my mouth. They were talking about her speech at the Republican National Convention and how she is a "great speaker" (yeah, with a teleprompter), how intelligent she is (um, Mrs. Palin what is the Bush Doctrine?) and how she is a much better leader than Hillary (What?! Oh my!)

Ladies and gents, I cannot remain tight-lipped any longer...Palin is not presidential material and if McCain kicks the bucket (which is not too far-fetched) she would be our next President. Shame on McCain for choosing her to be his puppet and putting her on display, like the 'pit bull with lipstick' that she self professes. I hate to say it (and deep inside I don't want to believe it), but I feel she was chosen for her gender. She certainly was not chosen for her experience! Palin is a 'token' appropriation because the Republicans saw an opportunity to ride the waves of Hillary love.

There is my rant...now for a rave! First of all, Tina Fey makes a brilliant Palin. Finally, there is good news on the home front...a dear friend of mine, who has always voted republican, recently sent me this email:

"I am horrified that she is nominated as VP. What an insult to
women. I may vote Democratic this year. Can you believe it?"

Confessions of a First-Year PhD Student...

To say that I am content would be a lie! My days are quite bipolar...as I have waves of doubt, excitement, overwhelm and pure confusion. I have been told by many of my colleagues that this is a natural feeling the first year of PhD devotion. Not only am I trying to process through heaps of reading material, but I also have these soul-searching thoughts that flood my mind daily. Here is a quick and dirty run-down of a few thoughts that graced my mind today (beware: the following thoughts are negative and not recommended for children with dreams under the ages of 20):

1.) Is this really where I should be right now; doing a PhD and living in the south (away from my friends and family)? Living in a world away from the mountains in the deep south where Palin love fests are an everyday common occurrence? No weekend travels to Italy, no hikes up Sanitas, no Sunday walks in Bygdøy, no foreign languages, no Colorado sunsets, just a laptop and a stack of books and assignments. No ski season, #&%@!

2.) Ok, the reality...this is a huge transition from the exciting life I just experienced; gallivanting around the world with the free-spirit of a bald-eagle soaring through the crisp blue skies. Now, I spend my days planning what I will read tomorrow, when I will write the upcoming papers, thinking about Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Some might prefer to live this life of a thinker, but I am not sure I do. The transition has been quite dramatic.

3.) What the hell am I doing?

4.) The workload is at the level of ridiculousness. I just need to surrender to the fact that I will never be able to read everything that is assigned.

5.) Am I really cut out to be an academic? What will I do with a PhD? What will I write my dissertation on? Will I make it through second year comps (tests)...or first year or better yet this week?

6.) How can I get a travel grant to do research in another country?

7.) Why am I finding it so hard to find the goodness in all of this?

8.) Why am I writing this blog, when I should be reading/studying?

Honesty, damn it's hard to swallow sometimes! I'm hoping that by posting these thoughts, it will be like a garbage disposal and grind up all of the nasty residue in the kitchen sink. If you have answers to any of these questions, dial 1-800-Leasafreaksout.

The FIRST Football Game...Carnage!

UGA is ranked #1 (in the nation) in the pre-football poll! This is big news for all of those bulldawg fans in Georgia! As a result of this ranking, a football ticket is like a barrel of oil; expensive and in high demand. Luckily, I was eligible for three of the six home games, based on my class standing. This was the first year that the Athletic department only offered three of the six games to students with less than 38 credit hours, and this made for some disgruntled students. But, for me this worked out well, as I only want to go to a few games to experience the hype. On Saturday, UGA played Georgia Southern and crushed them...45-21.

You know you are at a UGA football game when:

1.) Men wear red pants.

2.) Women wear sundresses, heels, and UGA tattoos on their face.

3.) The beautiful green space on campus is transformed into one big tailgate party! Beer cans, pop-up tents, and BBQ grills are as far as the eye can see.

4.) People buy tickets from scalpers for $250 (no joke!)

5.) It's not a UGA game unless you see at least one undergrad puking out his/her guts. Binge drinking is all the rage!

6.) The town of Athens becomes a ghost town during the game, good time to go shopping!

7.) You see big men with big bulldogs on leashes walking through the downtown area.

8.) There are bake-sales on every corner as you walk to the stadium.

9.) Little boys are dressed up as UGA football players and little girls are dressed up as UGA cheerleaders.

10.) The family friendly zone (alcohol-free zone) is absolutely desolate (see picture!)

Athens Local Brew--Terrapin!

Within this liberal pocket in the deep south, there is a down-home, local brew that is worth introducing. Terrapin beer with a turtle playing a banjo in a field of rye. And, that logo is pretty much the feel of the brewery, there is not one ounce of pretentiousness about it. A local artist was strumming his guitar and playing blue-grass tunes as we tasted eight different brews for $8 in the non-air-conditioned brewery. This was the venue chosen for the Campus Life staff social...a good opportunity to get to know the folks I will be working with this year. We missed the tours, but the brewery is so small that you can pretty much look around while standing in one place and you have seen the entire brewery. My favorite brew: Sun-ray (the October brew which is not out yet). If you like bite to your beer, try Big Hoppy Monster...it is 8% alcohol. This was a welcomed field trip away from all of the books.

It is a Tornado of Marxism!

U G A - ATHENS

Message sent - 8/26/2008

Tornado Warning
This is an important emergency announcement from the University of Georgia emergency alert system. The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Athens-Clarke County until ______ o'clock. A tornado warning means that a tornado has been sighted or indicated on radar in Athens-Clarke County. Seek shelter indoors immediately. Proceed to the lowest level of the building. Stay off phones to enable you to recieve additional emergency instructions. This is not a drill. Tornado warning for Athens-Clarke County.

Oops, they forgot to add a time and yes, they spelled "receive" incorrectly!

This is the email I found in my inbox after all 16 of us PhD students hunkered together in the basement of our building as the loud sirens hailed and the storm clouds swirled above. Our professor, Dr. Sheila Slaughter, didn't let the tornado warning stop class...she gathered us together in a small, cramped hallway as we discussed Karl Marx theories. I felt like Marx was laughing in his grave as we were scrunched together without the material luxury of ergonomic chairs and a high-tech classroom, yet the Coca-Cola machine (I should get an endorsement for this) was the only reminder needed, yes...we do live in a capitalist country! Luckily, the wrath of Marx didn't revolt and the tornado spiral missed us by 5 miles...the only thing left spinning was my head.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his
needs."

I GOT Class!

In the U.S. a PhD includes a few years of coursework, specifically in my program it is 2 years of coursework before we take comps (tests) and are invited to write our dissertation. Finally, I have made some tough decisions and I am signed up for my first semester PhD courses! We are encouraged to take a Statistics I class, if we need a refresher (or in my case a remedial class), as we need to be ready to take a Statistics II class in the spring semester. So, I took a tour of Statistics courses this first week and let me tell you...it was F-U-N! All kidding aside, I had to choose between one kick-my-ass and have-no-life-except-Statistics-class OR a basic, foundational class through the sociology department. I chose the latter. You would think it would be a no-brainer decision but somehow I like to make these decisions much more difficult than they should be. Here is my schedule:

Higher Education in the United States (3 credits)

Analysis & Interpretation of Sociological Data I (3 credits)

Social Theory & Higher Education (3 credits)

Assistantship (3 credits)

Registration Bureaucracy!

It does not matter where I go, bureaucracy follows! On Friday, the Institute for Higher Education held orientation for all us newbies in the PhD program. There are 11 of us and we come from various places in the mother land (USA). Unfortunately, there are no international students in our cohort but Jennifer (an American friend from Oslo who lived abroad for the past 6 years) and I, hopefully we will fill a small portion of that knowledge gap. When I went online to register for classes...I discovered I had 2 flags preventing me from registering. One, they never received my diploma from the University of Oslo (shocker!) and two, the health center did not have my immunization history (oops, one small detail that slipped through the cracks). So, I spent the remainder of the day filling out waiver forms to compensate for Oslo's slack and lack of sending proof of my European master's degree and running around trying to track down my immunization history...which goes as far back as 1974. I totally just aged myself! Anyway, in Europe, I did not turn in any medical records, or immunization records, or fingerprints, and I was never asked to sign my life away. RANT! The European public health system is not as hyper-sensitive about these sorts of liability issues. But, here in the mother land, there are liability forms for everything as our culture is a bit litigation-happy. Luckily, my mother was able to track down my records and I did not get poked with the poison of vaccinations. I will be able to register for classes on Monday. Woohoo!

All of this called for a beer (or two). So, I joined the weekly tradition...happy hour, 5 p.m. at Cutter's bar.

Photos: The Institute of Higher Education (the building where my professors reside and most of my classes are located.)

Welcome to Athens, Georgia...home of the BULLDAWGS!

My week started with 3 days of orientation at the University of Georgia Campus Life department where I am the Doctoral Intern for the Center for Student Organizations. This is all part of the "free tuition" PhD deal. I work in a University department, gain practical skills in the field, and in return I receive a monthly stipend and a tuition waiver. It is a sweet deal, albeit not as "delicious" as the Erasmus Mundus scholarship I received in Europe. However, I'm fairly psyched about my jobs and the whole set-up. For 13 hours/week I work in Campus Life (allowing me to get back to my student affairs roots) and 7 hours/week I am a research assistant for Dr. Sheila Slaughter (which I'm quite honored to have the opportunity to work with her). It should make for a nice balance of student contact and research.

The Campus Life orientation was incredible! The first day I arrived, I was given more schwag (promotional items) than I ever thought possible...4 shirts, an umbrella, a football chair, pins, name tags, towel, lunch bag, backpack, and more (see pic). Everyday, during orientation, I was well fed and I even got to try real southern grits. Ok, it wasn't only the schwag and food that made me feel at home...it was the friendly people, thorough training, student-centered approach, and the silly nature of Student Affairs folks. I missed all of this when I was in Europe! However, I do have a new lens from my experience on the "outside" (academia) and can understand how Student Affairs is viewed as "fluff". I officially start working in these capacities next week!

The Joys of Moving IN!

I have *officially* moved 7 times in 2 years, now I can self-profess as a packing and moving expert! After all, isn't that what we all truly to aspire to be someday (to pack up our materialistic crap and move it from one corner of the world to the next)? Despite the skills and knowledge gained in this area it never seems to get easier. However, I have learned that setting up house, specifically my bedroom, is the best thing I can do to make it feel like home.

So, after dropping my dad off at the Atlanta airport (which was a harrowing 1.5 hour drive through the Atlanta highway traffic), I made my way to Ikea. Ikea is a huge warehouse of household goods; everything from wok frying pans, to bamboo plants, to beds. And, all three of these items ended up in one of the two shopping carts I tried to maneuver gracefully through the crazy Ikea crowds. After 4 hours, I cashed out at the cash register and found myself a bit engrossed, yet nostalgic, in the Swedish food section as I bought Scandinavian waffle mix, laks (salmon), and Swedish cinnamon rolls.

The Ikea bed came in 3 boxes with about 50 million different pieces and a 20 page "easy-to assemble (for people that played with legos during their childhood)" booklet. I must admit I grow quite impatient when I have to become an engineer. I was never a lego kind of kid, I was a Ken & Barbie kid! So, after 4 hours...and a few mantras of, "screw this" and "you can do it, unscrew and try again"...the bed was assembled! Note to self: next time do not drop dad at the airport before assembling IKEA furniture. The brilliant news is that it didn't break in half as my tired, and otherwise flustered body timidly climbed on the bed. Thank goodness!

Roadtrip to Georgia!

A road trip across the U.S. is enough to get me back to my American roots! My father & I loaded the SUV and headed out on the road...for a 4 day trip to Georgia!

KANSAS- After driving nine hours from Colorado in the 103F/39c weather, we were ecstatic (and a bit stiff from the car ride) when we arrived in Overland Park, Kansas. We could not believe how friendly everyone was (even the grocery store cashier was genuinely happy as she scanned our cheese and bananas.) You see, the international stereotype about Americans is that we are superficially friendly. Yet, I have come to the conclusion that our avid culture around small talk, smiles, general friendliness and openess to complete strangers is actually filling a void; it makes us feel connected in an unconnected culture that values independence. And let me qualify this by saying...not every American is genuinely friendly.

MISSOURI- We found ourselves shopping at a HUGE Walmart (a hypermart)! Yes, if there is any store that represents down-home USA, it is the sprawling piece of concrete that is known for being the biggest gun-seller and the largest employer in the U.S. (according to Money magazine). We grabbed some strawberries, a wine opener, and browsed the gun aisle (ha, ha!)

ARKANSAS- After a seven hour drive through the sweltering heat and beautiful green, lush farm country of Arkansas, we arrived in Little Rock. Home of Bill Clinton and the beginning of the southern drawl. We found the best Indian restaurant in Arkansas and enjoyed some chicken tikka masala. Ok, we cheated! Normally, when we travel we are ardent about trying the local cuisine...but the south is known for the unhealthy, greasy food and therefore we declined the opportunity to clog our arteries.


MISSISSIPPI- This is officially the fattest state in the motherland. I think it might have something to do with the local cuisine: fried pickles, fried green tomatoes, biscuits and gravy, grits, fried chicken, Mississippi mud pie (this is chocolate heaven), sweet potato pie, and fried okra. Yummy! Mississippi is also in the "bible belt". This was evident as we passed more churches than mile markers. I fully enjoyed the big billboards, "Don't make me come down there. -God", "No God, no peace; Know God, know peace." It just brought (some) truth to the international stereotype that Americans are uber religious.

ALABAMA- We exited the main highway and headed towards Joe Wheeler State Park on a good ol' country road. Now, this is where we experienced the true deep south. We drove through many counties that were dry, meaning NO ALCOHOL sales. Crazy! Many of these dry counties have been dry since the prohibition days of the early 1900's. Since this is a democratic country, the people (within the county) have a say in this policy; as the dry county issue appears on the ballot every year. Yet, just across the county line, you will find "package stores" (the old-school name for liquor stores). We spent the night at the Joe Wheeler State Park resort lodge, which sits right on the lake and luckily we managed to buy a 6 pack of Corona, as the park is located in a dry county. Our room had a balcony overlooking the pool and marina with 2 beautiful wooden rocking chairs. It was a great spot to spend our last night on the road. The next day, as my father went to throw out the beer bottles in the hallway (so no one would know that they were from our room), he found that we were not the only heathens...the rubbish bin was full of beer cans.

GEORGIA- Ah, we made it...just in time for Atlanta rush-hour. EWWWW! More on Georgia later...