For no reason whatsoever this morning riding the Hiawatha LRT back to my apartment I started pulling together some thoughts I’ve had about education. I got so distracted that I almost forgot to get off the train at my stop, so I figured that was a good reason to post what I had been thinking about.
Archive for October, 2006
Education
Thursday, October 26th, 2006More Grad School
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006It sounds like I decided to take the most time-consuming class in the MURP program this semester, at least according to
other students. On one hand this is a very good thing, as it means that I shouldn’t have quite so much of my time eaten in the coming semesters. The other hand in this case is that the class is likely to only get more difficult, and I have a half semester course starting in a few weeks. I should get my grades on my last few projects back in a week or so, and that should give me an idea of whether or not I’m spending enough time on school work. I feel like I am, for the most part, although I did slack this weekend…
Working at the MCWD is proving to be a good move. Everyone there is fun and interesting, I’m learning a great deal about erosion control and general hydrology (which dovetails quite well with the class-of-crazy-workload), and I’ll get to push people around on construction sites. I’m thinking that maybe the most useful aspect will be an inside perspective on the workings of local government. The district is really it’s own governmental organization, and it’s kind of interesting seeing where it does and where it does not cooperate with the cities that share physical (if not regulatory) jurisdiction. A lot of it seems to be personality based – there are more contacts with the DNR, which shares many of the same goals and values, than with other governmental organizations. I have to wonder if maybe the land aquisition program would go more smoothly and have new opportunities open to it if they, say, partnered with a developing city or a parks and recreation board. Perhaps they already do, to some extent… I’ll have to figure that one out.
Busy. Very, very busy.
Thursday, October 5th, 2006Well, in an not-so-shocking turn of events, grad school has eaten up most of my time. This has, of course, lead to less posting, since I have more valuble things to do during my down time. Like playing games on PopCap.
The positive side to this is that I’m back in school, which for the most part rocks. All of the incoming urban planning students seem really damned smart, which makes for fantastic class discussion. We’re assigned insane amounts of reading, which realistically cannot all be done. However, it does mean that there’s always something interesting to think about. The only down side to all of this that I can see is that I feel like I’m at risk for developing some kind of weird inferiority complex, as it seems like everyone in the class has had FAR more experience than I in housing/policy/other planning related fields. Still, this is much much better than being surrounded by a group of of poorly prepared/not that bright/completely uninterested and detached people, which was often the case in college.
My morning-routine website Pharyngula recently posted a link to a fun little potential law passed by the House: HR 2679, which denies lawyers compensation even when they win a case against a government official concerning the establishment of religion. This is a pretty typical tactic of the current far right wing – find a way to completely cripple those who disagree with you, in a way that is complicated enough that the media isn’t going to want to spend the time to explain it fully to those effected. By taking away compensation, this law would remove any incentive (apart from moral, and we all know how well morality serves to motivate people) of lawyers to go after public officials for stamping blatant christianity all over public actions and places. This is a CRUCIAL piece of legal protection against theocracy, but because it can’t be boiled down into a 30 second soundbite, it won’t get any play, ever. Maybe the senate will vote it down; maybe if it does get enacted into law it will be demolished by the first challenge by the ACLU. We can only hope, and maybe vote down the bastards who voted for it.