The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Too Much Analysis of an Overextended College Student Dwelling in a Capitol City

Category : College Life

Slide On The Ice

“Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice: Pull down your pants and slide on the ice.”

So goes one of the most memorable quotes from the television series M*A*S*H, spoken by Dr. Sidney Freedman, as he reminds the camp to remember to take time to enjoy life every so often.

If there’s one thing that I remember about this time one year ago, it’s that I was quite nervous and anxious about the uncertainty that lay ahead of me. For the first time, i was leaving pretty much everything familiar in my life behind, and had absolutely no idea what my life was going to be like even a week away. And it was with these thoughts that I arrived at American University, and launched myself headfirst into a bunch of general-education classes (read: classes that helped me figure out what I don’t want to do with my life), an insane and needless late-night impeachment scuffle, surviving through the snowiest winter in District of Columbia history, organizing a televised presidential debate (and almost losing my sanity doing so), and quite a bit more. Throw in seven (count them, seven) all-nighters, six of which were during the final six weeks of spring classes, and a bunch more late-nighters throughout the year, plus a truckload of papers and homework, adjusting to living away from home, and all of that, and I had one hell of a freshman year.

And that is why I bring up Dr. Freedman’s quote to start off this post, because that’s what I want the theme of my sophomore year to be. This year is going to be different. This year is going to be enjoyable. This year I’m going to take things less seriously and enjoy my time at American University.
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My August Pre-Travelogue

Sorry for the nearly-one-month absence from this blog; let’s just say that I’ve had my hands full during the latter part of summer. Of course, tomorrow I’m planning to kick out a bigger blog post wrapping up the summer and looking ahead to my Fall 2010 semester, as I sojourn back to AU once again. However the story of my multi-faceted travel plans next week warrants its own blog post, especially since I like talking about itineraries so much.

I’ll cut to the chase first — I’m flying back to Washington, DC on Monday. I’m taking off on Southwest Flight #1142, departing San Francisco (SFO) at 9:50 AM and arriving in Phoenix (PHX) at 11:45 AM. Then, after a long two-and-a-half-hour layover there, I’m hopping on flight #155 at 2:15 PM, which will arrive at Baltimore at 9:35 PM.

But from here is where the story gets interesting. Originally, I had planned from there to hop on a Metrobus, then hop on Metro, then hop on the AU shuttle to get back to AU, getting in at around a quarter after midnight. Late, yes, but I would be able to check into my dorm, since after all last year I arrived at AU two days earlier.
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On Elections

The past week or so at AU has been a week filled with the spirited discussion over the spring Student Government elections. And by “spirited discussion” I mean “wicked crap-fest.”

Seriously, I miss last September’s impeachment hearings.

Four very strong candidates threw themselves into the running for Student Government President: Nate Bronstein, Anthony Dunham, Nirvana Habash, and Seth Rosenstein. Through my past six months as Student Government Parliamentarian, I have gotten to know each of them very well and have worked closely with most of them. Nate Bronstein was an enthusiastic Senator when I joined last September, and is now the Director of Outreach for the SG. He’s the one who put on a Winter Semi-Formal before finals last semester (actually the biggest SG event that actually happened so far this year), and got everyone excited about it by having a sense of humor about it–such as naming sponsorship levels for the event “Bronstein” and “Fiery Passion.” I didn’t have an opportunity to get to know Nirvana very well as she was abroad during first semester and only rejoined the Senate after the Snowpocalypse, but she has definitely shown herself to be an active member of SG. Seth Rosenstein was first sworn in as Senator on the day that I was sworn in, and I’ve seen him take a very active role as an advocate for key campus life issues in the Senate, particularly stepping up after AU’s housing policies flip-flopped last January. And Anthony Dunham was instrumental in helping me get acquainted with the Student Government; he was the Speaker of the Senate when I first became Parliamentarian (making him the person I worked closest with during my first month or so transitioning into my role), not to mention he was my predecessor as Parliamentarian in 2008-09.

See what I did there? I just said something positive and complementary about all four candidates and my experiences with them, without pointing fingers, criticizing their thoughts about running, or saying anything about the state of AU’s Student Government. Nor did I endorse any of them. I know who I’m going to vote for tomorrow–it wasn’t easy for me to decide–but I’m not going to spew out a meaningless endorsement as though one of them is immensely superior to the other three.

And that’s because I don’t expect any kind of huge partisan politics to arise out of a presidential campaign for Student Government. We’re not here to fight over foreign policy or health care positions; we’re all here to advocate and do what’s best for the students of American University.

Last Thursday I produced the televised SG Presidential Debate co-sponsored by ATV and The Eagle. It took a lot of work over many weeks to put together, and a number of communication issues caused me a lot of undue stress in preparing the live production. But in the end, as far as the production was concerned (which was the primary area of my concern), the debate went very well. Feel free to watch it here.

If you do watch it, you’ll probably notice that a) it’s kind of boring, and b) the candidates seem to agree with each other a lot. Knowing all four of these candidates well (as I’ve already mentioned), I wasn’t at all surprised that they would agree a lot with each other. Yet for some reason all of the viewers, campus media commentators, and the other crew members that were working with me on this debate seemed surprised that there wasn’t more drama. For some reason some short-sighted commentators seemed to miss the obvious fact that we at ATV were not responsible for what the candidates actually said. In my view, the debate exemplified exactly what the Student Government and the candidates should stand for.

And outside of last Thursday’s debate, what we’ve been getting out of this week-and-a-half campaign season has been anything but civil, yet the stupid part has been that the primary group responsible for making these elections such a firestorm is the board within SG responsible for overseeing the elections themselves.

You see, AUSG has a whopping seven pages of election regulations that place all kinds of restrictions on campaigns, and it’s up to the Board of Elections to enforce them. Of course it doesn’t help that the Board of Elections chair resigned just a week or two before the elections started getting underway, so the newly-installed chairwoman of the Judicial Board (which oversees the BOE) decided to also take on the role of Acting Chair for the BOE. Hopefully there wouldn’t arise any possibility of a conflict of interest.

Except that a conflict did arise when a staff member on Nirvana Habash’s campaign sent a campaign e-mail through an academic mailing list without permission from the BOE, a clear infraction of the election regulations. The BOE responded by suspending her campaign and removing her from the ballot. (Huh, just for sending an e-mail? But wait, it gets better.) She appealed the decision to the Judicial Board, which of course had the same chair (though the chair claims that she did not speak or vote in the J-Board hearing and deliberations), and they found that the BOE had failed to provide her with the necessary 12 hours to “rectify” the violation. (Though I’m still baffled as to how one “rectifies” the sending of an e-mail to a mailing list.) Of course this caused plenty of controversy, and after a retrial, or whatever it was, the decision was reached that Habash could continue to campaign but would have to run as a write-in candidate.

Okay, that kind of stinks, but the debate was that night and everything was hunky-dory. After the debate, the current SG president endorsed Nate Bronstein in a song, and then Friday came. And then all hell broke loose.

Oh, and yet another e-mail violation happened the next day.

Now to keep this blog post from getting extremely long, I won’t go into just how crazy all of this was for the candidates, the Board of Elections members, and everyone else in the SG. Let’s just say that it feels like whatever shred of legitimacy the SG may have had simply vanished during this campaign. The idea of having all candidates run as write-ins never happened because apparently–according to the other candidates–Seth Rosenstein refused to do so. Fortunately the fake Bronstein e-mail did not cost him anything (since it was so obviously fake), though paradoxically the next e-mail supporting him that was sent out the next day by an actual member of his staff didn’t cost him anything, despite being similar to the one that hurt Habash. So now there’s all kinds of allegations about every such thing flying around in terms of who did or didn’t violate some rule or act unethically, and there’s no shortage of Senators who claim that they’re going to vote invalidate the election results (I wish them luck, because for some strange reason, our bylaws necessitates a 3/4 vote for that to happen). I’m sorry, I thought we were supposed to be focusing on which candidate would make the best next Student Government President?

Even though I strongly disagree with his unfounded comments towards last week’s SG Debate and his “the world revolves around me” attitude when it comes to AUSG, I would have to agree with him on these comments. But then one scrolls down and reads the mudslinging between the candidates over their different interpretations of what the future of SG should look like–there’s just no need for it. (I guess I should applaud Nate Bronstein for not getting involved when the comments turned into a virtual food fight between the other three candidates.)

As I said, I’ve decided whom I’m going to vote for. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t vote for any of the other three candidates. All of them are active, passionate members of SG and have a wealth of good ideas that they will bring to the office which they seek. None of them deserve to have less-than-an-equal shot at the office because of some insignificant, harmless “violation.” Ultimately though, one thing that this campaign is showing clearly is the attitudes of each of these candidates, and that’s going to be the key to selecting the cream of the crop for this office. The American University Student Government is so dysfunctional right now that–while it may not be anywhere near as bad as the actual government just a few blocks away from us–it is going to take a leader that can reach out to all sides, build bridges, establish good relationships, and especially be able to exude a sense of humor when it’s fitting to do so to help bring the AUSG closer to where it should be–an organization that represents, serves, and advocates for students. And most of all it’s going to take more than just the newly-elected President; everyone in SG and everyone at American University are going to have to stop lighting fires and start building bridges if AUSG is ever going to change direction.

I hope that despite all of the new fires that this election has fueled, we will walk away from this election having selected a leader that will help turn the sprinklers on so that we can all cool down and move forward.

Here It Goes Again: Semester Deuce

Today is the last day of my 23-day winter vacation back home in the Bay Area. Tomorrow I get up ridiculously early to fly back to DC (via Chicago-Midway and Baltimore), get settled back in over the weekend, and then start classes on Monday.

This is about the first time that I can actually say that I’ve had an actual vacation in the real sense of the word. After a long and difficult semester at school, getting to come home, relax, and spend time with family for three weeks has been wonderful. Granted, it hasn’t been entirely about relaxing, as I did get a number of things done over the past few weeks:

  • Completed a phpBB Weekly website renovation and edited another “best of” clipshow
  • Getting more work done on ATV’s website (though I’ve still got a lot more to do)
  • Our family’s harp/flute/cello trio had a great (albeit abbreviated) season playing our Christmas music, playing at a potluck on Friday 12/18, playing at the park each day during 12/22-24 (under awesome weather conditions, for winter), and recording ourselves the following week
  • Getting to meet again with friends from church, from 17th District PTA, family, and others
  • Getting to pay a visit yesterday to my high school, which was wonderful
  • And overall, just having a chance to relax for awhile back in my old pre-DC living routine

But all good things much come to an end, as yet another semester is now coming up right on the heels of the last one. Again, my class load this semester consists exclusively of general ed courses, and I’ve still got an undecided/undeclared major. However this semester’s schedule of classes is much more diverse in its range of topics compared to last semester, and its timing is much more consistent–not all over the place like last semester’s was.

  • Psychology as a Natural Science — Mondays and Thursdays, 9:55-11:10 AM — 3.00 credits
  • Psychology as a Natural Science Lab — Thursdays, 5:30-8:10 PM — 1.00 credits
  • Honors English II — Mondays and Thursdays, 2:10-3:25 PM — 3.00 credits
  • Contemporary Media in a Global Society — Tuesdays and Fridays, 9:55-11:10 AM — 3.00 credits
  • Transformations of Shakespeare — Tuesdays and Fridays, 11:20 AM-12:35 PM — 3.00 credits
  • Schools and Society — Wednesdays, 11:20 AM-2:00 PM — 3.00 credits

So why do I like this schedule so much more than last semester’s? First of all, I found that one of the hardest things for me last semester was how every single day’s schedule was completely different in terms of its timing. My first class would be a really-late 11:20 on Monday and Thursday, a really-early 8:30 on Tuesday and Friday, and nothing on Wednesday. Which was very annoying for someone like me who functions better under more consistency and structure. This semester, I start at 9:55 AM across the board, except for Wednesday which is 11:20. (So what, my high school also had later starts on Wednesdays.) This schedule is also much more respectful of my free time: last semester I had classes scattered throughout the day on Tuesdays and Fridays giving me only small, fairly-useless patches of free time on those particular days. And with the exception of the Thursday evening lab, only two classes per day should be much more manageable as well. And speaking of the Thursday evening lab, it doesn’t go till 10-11 PM like my Thursday night class last semester did!

And my classes score a bit more variety than last semester’s. I indicated in a post last August that my classes seemed a bit Political Sciencey. That omen proved to be accurate, as I kind of found out that political sciencey stuff might not be my forte after all. And having three of my classes relate to it got kinda dull kinda fast. This semester I’ve got a science class (the one general ed area that I didn’t delve into last semester), a class that comes from the School of Communication (which I might possibly be leaning towards), a class that comes from the Education department (another interest that I’ve had), a class about Shakespeare (because it sounded more interesting than the other choices, plus I’ve got some experience with Shakespeare), and English.

So far only my Contemporary Media has a syllabus available, and it’s looking pretty interesting, potentially involving trips to and reports on media events in DC. So maybe this semester I’ll get to delve into some of the political fun happening just blocks away from campus. English is also sure to be interesting: this semester is the semester where each section of English breaks down into a different theme that is focused on for the semester–the one I selected is “the New Yorker course,” which essentially means (to my understanding) that we subscribe to and study The New Yorker magazine as a basis for studying English. Of course I will have a better idea of what we’re doing there once the syllabus gets posted.

Nevertheless, I am very confident that this second semester will be much, much better than first semester was. The main reason: I’ve already done this once. When I left for DC back in August, I had no idea what my life was going to become or what kinds of things I was going to get involved in. I had never lived on my own for so long before, and the dynamics of college classes are 100% different from the dynamics of high school that I was used to. Now I’m heading back to AU with a better idea of how to do well there, and everything is starting again completely fresh. And as such, I’ve got a couple of goals for this next semester:

  • Do a better job of keeping up with my classes. I’ve alluded to the fact that I got behind on my reading by the second week of classes and never caught up. But quite frankly, while all of my classes had a lot of reading, only about two of my classes had an insane amount of reading to accomplish, and my generalization wound up being a bit unfair to my other classes. So next semester I’m hoping to do a better job of at least staying on top of the reading assignments, even if I don’t completely get to every single word. Oh, and let’s hope that I won’t beat out the 20 papers that I did last semester.
  • Budget EVERYTHING. Money, meals, sleep, daily schedule, studying, free time, you name it. My efforts at doing this failed last semester because things kept changing so much and so fast. This semester, I’ve got a better grasp of the dynamics of being at college, and so I need to start planning and budgeting so that I can keep up with everything this semester. Not having to do late-nighters and stuff would be nice too…
  • Get out and about more. AU has a free bike lending program which I didn’t take advantage of last semester, but I would definitely like to as there’s supposed to be some great places to bike in around DC. Or even just taking a walk every once in awhile; the day before I left DC for home I had a nice walk around northwest DC which was very enjoyable and refreshing. I need to do that more; getting off-campus doesn’t have to mean sitting on a shuttle or Metro train. Plus, three places I want to visit in DC this semester: Rock Creek Park, Eastern Market, and the Capitol.
  • Learn everything I can about ATV. I’m already about 60% of the way there, but I really want to be able to learn how everything at ATV works so that I can know the place inside and out. In addition, I’m going to be working with them to make a lot of new things possible this semester–pushing the envelope, so to speak–such as Skype interviews and much more. Plus there’s always more stuff that can be built for their website…
  • Make Tech tAUk the best show on ATV. Okay, maybe not the best show; I’m not that narcissistic. But I definitely want our show to be the most cutting edge show on there. Our first three episodes have laid a solid foundation for the show, but we’ve got a long way to go to really make it look awesome and professional. And a lot of it will be based on how well I can develop my editing skills. Now that I’ve reached the “experienced beginner” stage of Final Cut Pro, it’s time for me to get even more experience and delve deeper.
  • Find a job. I’m getting kind of tired of mooching off of my parents to support myself, though that probably won’t stop before too long. Actually I’ve got a couple of things that I want to be able to do this summer, and I want to be able to set aside some money of my own to help fund those goals.

I’m also entering this semester not completely sure when I’m coming back from DC. My winter break flights were already booked at the beginning of August, weeks before I took off for even my first semester. That’s not holding quite as true this semester. For one thing, I’m not coming back home for Spring Break. The reason is that my family’s spring breaks are around the time of Easter, which is April 4th. My Spring Break is March 8-12. See a problem here? If I came back for Spring Break, my family would all be at work and school, the only time I’d really get to spend with them would be on the weekends, which is (oh yeah) when I’d be flying. Given the cross-country distance, it’s not worth the travel expenses. Of course the other side is that Spring Break will be a lot like Thanksgiving Break was: an almost-completely-abandoned campus, very few food places open on-campus, and an insane amount of free time with which I’ll wind up being ridiculously productive. Meh, I’ll probably be able to suffer through it without too many problems.
As for summer, I’m not entirely sure yet if I want to opt for a summer class or an internship or something. Or I may decide to fly right back to San Francisco and find something to keep myself occupied here. At the very least I do plan to come back to the Bay Area at some point in order to be able to do things like OSCONvasion 2010, etc. The nice thing is that I’ll have a very early and long summer break. My last final is on Tuesday, May 4, and classes won’t start back again until August 23 (I’m assuming based on last fall’s schedule). But I’ll let a bit more of the semester go by before I start worry about any of that.

So here’s to the start of what will (or better) be a much better semester!

P.S. Yes I know that it’s now freezing in DC, and yes my cold weather gear is all ready to go. I actually have a bit too much cold weather gear, if such a thing is possible.

Semester in Review — Part 3: Life

This is the third part of a three-part blog post looking back at my first semester at American University, and the challenges and accomplishments that I have had to face in the marathon that was this past semester. This third part looks back on aspects and thoughts on my first semester of college life in general; see also Part 1 and Part 2.

I’m typing this blog post right now on a plane somewhere over the midwest, ultimately bound for Oakland (via a stop in Albuquerque, of all places), and finally ultimately bound for home. I probably would have preferred to have written this post back in DC; unfortunately packing and dorm-cleaning got in the way of accomplishing that goal.

Ultimately though, today is a proud day for me, as today marks the end of my first semester in college. I don’t think that I’ve ever anticipated a day as highly or for as long as I have anticipated today. (Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I’ve been counting down the days on there for the past four weeks.) I actually was here for a relatively long time this semester: a full 123 days. I got here on Saturday, August 15th, the earliest possible move-in date, two days before freshman welcome week, and stayed through today, December 15th, a day before the latest possible move-out date, and four days after my last final. Most AU students got here between 3-9 days after I did and left up to a week before I did, and most of them also went home for Thanksgiving Break. So by AU standards, I was here for a LONG time.

This semester was also significantly long for me in other ways. Never before had I spent more than ten nights way from home in one sitting, and this time I spent 122 nights away from home. In fact, I even went back through my memory and tallied up the total number of nights that I had spent away from my family in my entire life (all of them within the past seven years): the tally before I left in August was 83 nights. Today my tally is 205.

And in some ways my extended length of time away from home was a good thing. I repeatedly told people this semester that I saw this first semester at AU as a marathon: the goal was simply to make it to the finish line. While there were a number of good things about this semester, there have also been many, many times when it has–not surprisingly-felt like the semester from hell.
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