Blah.

I have not felt like writing.

anything.

For an academic program that revolves around weekly essays and little more- this is not a good thing. Nor is it good for a blog site which can't exist unless I do something worth writing about. I've have tried to analyze myself - and respond accordingly, but nothing I've rationalized seems to make me feel like doing anything. I could be lazy. I could be a bit burned out. I could just be uninterested-or interested in other things. I could be homesick. I could just be ready to move to whatever is suppose to come next......Or I could just blame it all on the weather...it has been raining for a week now.

For the sake of the value of my last four weeks...and for this blog, lets hope that I become motivated to do SOMETHING. otherwise I will have to resort to talking about the weather some more i guess......


It's not that I'm not getting the work done. I am. But I'm not working nearly as intensely as I did last term. And because International relations is very specific in terms of historical events, it is not good for me to come to a tutorial just not knowing things. This is what happened last Tuesday. My topic was NATO. I read everything Lee told me to. I understood the concepts and the challenges.....but when it came to writing the essay I just didn't get the answer right. I tried to look more broadly and theoretically as he suggested...and instead I turned out far too broad and still missing the theory part altogether.

Now, I have decided to do better this week....but like I said, I feel as though I 've lost most of my interest in working on it altogether. I know that this has to be my perfectionism creeping in again. It has to be. I'm afraid that if I work the amount that I would to try to get it right....I may still get it wrong....and no matter what there is no way I'm going to know all that I should to just pop off examples that Lee is looking for in the tutorial. This subject is getting as hard as I will let it become....and at times like this I wish there were some moderation about me. At least then I could half way try. Instead I know that I will continue to just completely slack....or I'm going to obsess over my essay for a full 6 days and still stress over it when its done. I thought I had achieved some sort of balance...but I realize now I was just relying on my previous knowledge of the topic to allow me to work less...now the material is relatively unfamiliar...and I seem to be backing down. Probably doesn't make for the most intriguing blog subject. But I feel as though I need to recognize my need to get with the program before I get to the end and wonder why I wasted the time.

Right. It's only worth as much as I'm willing to work on it.

So, in an attempt for inspiration I attended the Elizabeth Colson lecture last evening associated with the Center for Refugee Studies. Mark Duffield presented a talk on Development Emergency...or rather the emergencies that occur with underdevelopment. Duffield was an Oxfam Representative in Sudan in the late 80's and is now at the University of Bristol. The talk was interesting enough...but what I love the most is the response of the people in the room. This lecture isn't a typical weekly lecture for students. Its more of a special event catering to researchers who have been working on these topics for ages. The dialogue going on between Duffield and the adults presents was really above my level of understanding most of the time. The crowd, even though they agreed with some of his work, were just incredibly harsh on an level that could only be witnessed in such scholarly settings.... The critiques when beyond basic "left vs. right wing" debate to a this theoretical analysis of what his arguments for development contained....and I wondered how nerve racking it must be to deliver a lecture to people who have been involved in this research to an equal extent. Of course this seemed to be no trouble for the speaker. One of the men in the crowd was part of the Tsunami response evaluation committee so he felt the need to bring that to the table...and others in the room would bring their own research into their challenges to Marks' paper as well. Most of it was beyond anything I could really understand fully, but I found the dialogue fascinating and also a reminder of just how much I don't know about the topic I am to major in.

Political studies just offers endless topics for debate.....and whats truly interesting to me is that the issues of real significance seem to be locked away in rooms of these lectures cared for only by scholars and researchers in the field. Not that the big issues we get hung up on for voting aren't important...I think its just interesting to see what becomes priority when shaping political choices in general. Because the truth is that the idea of "development" would not even cross my mind were I not studying politics -well, aside from the realization that poverty exists. Beyond that, everything I know politically would still circle around healthcare, taxes, etc. I hate that I don't have an opinion on some of the topics I'm convering becuase I never have have been challenged to consider the issue. Development is just one of these. Even though I study politics, I generally don't blog about it basically because most people find it boring or just have a very solid opinion about it anyway... I have to admit that I find most of the popular debates overdone between people who aren't going to compromise anyhow. But beyond abortion, and the death penalty, and gun laws and all of these topics that it seem to ground the political perspectives of most people I have met....there are some issues that are more than relevant and demand more attention than simply the debates of well-experienced scholars using jargon that prevents a simple mind like mine from taking part in the discussion.....

Why was I a junior in college before I grasped the reality of human trafficking? Why can I not understand the intricacies of a debate on facilitating or giving up on development as a response to the third world?

Okay, well now that I have succeeded in boring myself in a political discussion that I promised never to have on my blog.......i can get back to the business of reading for my next question "Why is Security such a Contested Concept?".

hmm...i didn't realize it was.

just kidding.