9.27.2005

nouveau riche

dear friends,

went upstairs to see the office of population research speaker. the topic, female educational attainment and the risk of union dissolution, was a throughback to mcgill. the fact that there was a indian buffet for lunch was a reminder that i am no longer in the under-developed academic world.

i am totally the academic equivalent of nouveau riche.
cam

9.20.2005

there are some prosperous squirrels

dear friends,

just came back from an interesting lunch at the princeton institute for canadian studies. they say there is no such thing as a free lunch, but at no cost to me i got the following:

* sandwiches and cookies from my favourite bakery "olives" (and the admin assistant bagged them up for us while we were eating in the main room)
* a chance to network with other princeton canadians, who by the way are almost all hockey players or rowers (there were maybe 12 people there, 6 of whom were on the hockey team and 1 member of Canada's Olympic rowing team)
* and, really this is best of all i got to hear canada's ambassador to the eu call mcgill decrepit. it seems he was there last week and was taken aback by the astonishingly large class sizes and failing infrastructure. when he said "that place is falling apart" i had to stop myself from saying "amen. brother, kinsman testify"
* when noting what princeton gave to him (network of contacts, internationally solid reputation) he noted that the squirrels are even better here. it's not everyday that someone says "there are some very prosperous squirrels"

alas, must get back to work. i am getting peer-pressured to take missing data analysis. i totally need to get some new peers.

cam

9.16.2005

the longest thursday

dear friends,

yesterday was a long one. i have classes from 9 until 5:30 (generalized linear models, classical theory, and research design). interestingly my profs are all hispanic men. three of them are brilliant. two of them are kind. ending the day with a suprise test that included questions like:

- define reverse causality
- how can we minimize errors in type II hypothesis testing
- explain this poorly drawn diagram
- what is a path co-efficent

and on and on for 20 questions in 20 minutes is just not fun... so it's a good thing i hopped on the (free this week) nj transit and went to see arcade fire (and their friend david bowie) in the park with ms. p... brooklynvegan has pics.

i even managed to get back to princeton after the show, which reminded me somewhat of the hilary-cam concert adventures of fourth year... except now i complain a lot more and actually need to come home to get work done.

all in all a pleasant end to a long day.
cam

9.08.2005

fun squared

dear friends,

two fun things:

(1) brooklyn vegan has pics of last nights' clap your hands and say awesome show. i left with much merch. any venue that serves pierogies and my fave polish beer is fine by me. also, p and i totally used the bands' washroom. nyisc.

(2) my new ordinator has arrived. weighing it at just over 4lbs, i think i am in love.

i will not skip international orientation again tommorrow,
cam

9.07.2005

our grad school is better than your old grad school

dear friends,

have recently read the syllubi for two of my four courses. here is what i have to read for classical f'in theory:

Week 1: Introduction
Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty

Week 2: Founding Documents
Immanuel Kant, Political Writings
John Locke, Two Treatises on Government

Week 3: The Rise of Political Economy
Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments

Week 4: The Grand Experiment
James Madison and Alexander Hamilton., The Federalist Papers
Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Week 5: English Liberalism
JS Mill, On Liberty and other selections

Week 6: Marx I
G.W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right
Karl Marx German Ideology

Week 7: Marx II
Karl Marx, Capital

Weeks 8: Durkheim
Emile Durkheim, Division of Labor

Week 9: Simmel
Georg Simmel, Selections

Week 10: Weber I
The Protestant Ethic
Economy and Society, Selections

Week 11: Weber II
Economy and Society, Selections

Week 12: Central European Malaise
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment

in spite of the fact that i have already read 75% of this, i must do it again because none of this reading happened in a traditional grad course.

i am also doing the ethnographic sequence (a series of 4 mini courses over 2 semesters) that will give me (in theory) a MA in ethnography and make me part of the growing "princeton school" of contemporary ethnographers. it is really the best way for me to get the catholic women's project back on track.

for the first class we will be discussing the chicago school, so i have to read
in its entirety: The Social Order of the Slum (Suttles)in addition to:
Villa Victoria (Small) Preface, 2, 3--> done
Sidewalk (Duneier) Introduction, Part 3 and Part 4--> done
Black Picket Fences (Patillo-McCoy) Introduction, 4, 5, 6

some good things: i love what i do, i am grateful enough to have gotten in here to not mind doing the first year of gradschool hell over again, i loved reading ethnographies over the summer, and princeton is an incredibly boring place to live (comparatively)

some bad things: hegel. i hate f'in hegel.

going to pretend i am not in school for one more day and meet ms. p in the city for the clap your hands and say yeah show.