Week One Done

Well, I made it!!! One week down, tons more to go!! I am in love with school though so that is a good sign! I absolutely love my classes and my professors. My classes are: Women's Human Rights-cross cultural (focuses on Muslim majority countries! Right up my alley), Women in War (which is just half a semester), Intro to development, Policy Analysis, and Arabic!! There is a lot of reading but I am doing a remarkable job keeping up (don't remind me its only the first week). As many of you know (well lets face it how many of you even read this outside my family, so ALL of you would know...) that I am not the fasted/most gifted reader, and its something I struggle with. While, I am not getting faster just yet, I am so excited about all the of the topics we are reading thus far that I want to read it and understand everything! WEIRD :) Women and gender issues are a recurring theme in my classes which is awesome. I really think this first semester is going to set me up well for narrowing my MA from just being "International Policy Studies-Human Security and Development" to specializing in gender issues. Not to mention I have the perfect professors to mentor me along the way! My Development and Women's Human Rights classes are taught by the same professor Nuket Kardam (google her if you'd like and read her bio she's pretty incredible)...long story short is that she is Turkish and interested/studies/has worked in, all of the areas I would really like to focus on also! SO, hopefully we will become close so that I can really learn from her, and know what has been done in our field, what kind of research is lacking, basically, "where can I contribute to the field?" She is great! My Women in War professor is said to be toughest teacher on campus and she is wonderful. She is originally from India she focuses on conflict resolution and is also a very interesting woman. The readings for her class so far have been incredibly interesting, and depressing sometimes...it is women in war so a lot of it focuses on the negative impacts war has on women such as rape as a tool of war....depressing but something everyone needs to know about!! My Arabic professor is actually from a small village not far from ours and got her B.A. from the University of Balamand where I tried getting my MA last year, as you all remember! Small world!! She is great and is going to focus on teaching me more Lebanese dialect while we learn the standard language!! YAY Maybe by next summer (if) when I go to Lebanon I'll be able to speak/write/read Arabic on the formal level for a job AND Speak dialect with my family and friends! In Sha Allah as we say in Arabic, "God Willing". My Policy class is ok, the professor doesn't seem excited to teach it, its the class everyone hates including professors but its mandatory, so they rotate teaching it. His expertise is terrorism studies, specifically in the Far East ....I guess he is brilliant in that field.

My other "class" that I have is just for the first 3 Fridays of the semester and it is GREAT! It is called Career Design Strategies with my academic adviser. SO GET THIS!! Speaking of a small world, my academic adviser is not only the nicest, energetic, smart, helpful, basically any positive adjective you can use to describe someone, BUT She is from MILBANK, SD of all places!! HAHA She died when she found out I've been to Milbank, that I have family in Ortonville, the whole works! She loved it! hahaha In her class we are learning a lot about ourselves and what we want to do with our lives. She is going to help us revamp our resumes and cover letters, we are going to craft our "elevator pitch" (quick, less than a minute pitch to say to someone when looking for a job if you dont have much time) and help us craft our academic plans. I am really excited to work with her. She is just one of those people who you know truly wants to help you and definitely goes out of her way to help her students achieve their goals from what I hear.

I am going to be reflecting on this activity we did yesterday and think about things like my strengths, weaknesses, what my ideal job is, all that fun stuff...I will probably blog my thoughts and I'd love your honest (but not mean haha) feedback to help me honestly analyze what type of work I'd be good at and where I want to be in x years.

Well all, the Oregon vs LSU game is on and I am not cheering enough. Its the first quarter and LSU has 3 points, UO 0. They need my attention! :) GO DUCKS!!

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!