50 Shades of Gray

50 shades of gray?  

I bet you looked a looked at the title and thought that I’d reference the badly written and salacious work of fiction that has captivated women worldwide. Well, you’re WRONG!

I’m talking about gray hair!

In early July, I had one lonely gray hair. This solitary hair had been my constant companion throughout high school, undergrad and my first couple of jobs. If I combed my hair, I looked for it.  Yeah, I knew I was getting older, but at least I wasn’t turning into the frumpy old gray-haired fat cat lady.

Then I started The Kennedy School.  They supplied me with real cream for my coffee, beer, wine, potato chips and less-than-flavorful food service pizza to the point that my pants became tight. Fast forward 69 days from orientation and there has been an explosion of gray hair growth around my hairline.  Let’s not even start on the dark circles around my eyes from staying up late writing papers.

I worked hard for my youthful appearance and it’s already on the decline…after only 69 days!!!!! WTF?

I am determined to not let this Harvard experience physically age me, so this means that I’m going to have to go on the offensive.  No more late nights writing papers (right after I finish the one that I have due tomorrow!)  If I notice any more ’50 shades of gray’ I’m going to call up my girlfriend Miss Clairol and put her to work, but most importantly no more food service pizza.

I’m serious.  If you see me with a slice of food service pizza, feel free to slap it out of my hand.  It’s not as if it tastes good anyway. 

Friends don’t let friends eat HKS pizza.

Ups and Downs

When I started this blog, I made the decision to write about all of the good times and the bad times so that at the end of the year I can see how much I’ve grown. Well, this is one of those not-so-fun posts.

I knew that I was making a tremendous sacrifice when I decided to be a part of the Class of 2013, but the emotional toll of it was evident this past week.

On Saturday evening, I got word that my friend had given birth to a baby boy.  Not even 12 hours later I found out that a lifelong friend’s mom lost her battle with cancer.

Another friend has decided to stop her chemotherapy treatments and let nature take its course as she’s physically and emotionally tired.  I had hopes of seeing her in November, but based upon the time table given to her by the doctors, that may be too late.  I really wish I could visit with her one more time, but I’m happy with my last memory of her.  We were in drinking wine around her dining table and catching up.  Her adorable red-haired identical twin granddaughters kept us company.  The chemotherapy was already taking its toll, but she was in good-spirits and the most gracious hostess.

I haven’t felt well this past week.  I thought it was a cold, but as I read what I’ve written above, I’m sure that stress and emotional fatigue had a large part in taking down my immune system.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate cancer?

Readin’, Writin’, and ‘Rithmetic

Whew!  The first week of class is done.  Can the choir say amen and pass me a margarita?

Here at Harvard, they follow the Readin’, Writin’ and ‘Rithmetic model. 

In the past week, I was assigned no less than a thousand pages of dense course readings.  I’ve read about genocide, the Holocaust, the loss of grey matter in adolescent brains, the United Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Treatise on Rhetoric, and op-eds concerning the Chicago teachers strike among other things. For grins and giggles, they threw in a case study about cholera in the 1800’s.

Now that it’s Thursday night (my next class isn’t until Monday morning) I’ve got to start Writin’.  I’ve got an op-ed and at least two responses papers due by noon on Tuesday.  It wouldn’t be a lot of writing *if* I had finished all of my readings for the week.  I’ve decided to use tomorrow (Friday) as a reading day to get caught up all of my required reading.  I’ll start writing on Saturday morning (after archery practice) and use Sunday to go to church and to revise what I’ve written.  Between now and Monday, I’m also looking to attend a conference on Poverty, a study group on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights and the inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Committee meeting.   

I also have a problem set due for the Statistics course that I’m required to take. (That’s the ‘Rithmetic portion y’all!)

It wouldn’t be so bad if I have didn’t have the grouchies from putting myself on a diet. My love/love relationship with food and drink has caused my pants to be a little snug.  Actually, they’re more than a little snug…they’re down right TIGHT, but not in the “I’m-on-a-man-hunt” kind of way.  They are tight in the “Girl, that-button’s-going-to-pop-off-and-injure-someone” kind of way.

My comfort food of chocolate has been replaced by an apple with a tablespoon of peanut butter. I’m still going to indulge in an occasional margarita or glass of wine, but only because it’s medicinal.  I’ve been tracking/restricting my calories for the past week and 1) there has not been a midnight run to the 24 hour CVS to get chocolate, 2) I haven’t had withdrawal tremors and, 3) no one has been hurt by a flying button.

Is it too early to start the countdown to Christmas break? or better yet the American Candy and Chocolate Festival also known as Halloween?

Playing by the rules

My classmates are preparing for an insurrection against Harvard and I don’t blame them one bit.

Mid-Career Students vs HKS Administration

 

Harvard, in its intellectual wisdom, has made a simple process a royal pain in the ass.  Course selection and registration has become the bane of everyone’s existence, especially the mid-careers.  These are the rules for the registration “game”

1.      You can take up to 10 credits throughout the course of the one year program.

2.      You can take a maximum of 5 credits per semester.

3.      You must allocate 3 credits toward required classes.

4.      You can take almost any class offered at any of the Harvard Graduate Schools including the Business and Law school, as well as those offered by the MIT and Tufts’ graduate schools.

It would be if these were the only rules…it gets better:

5.      There are not enough seats in the required courses.

a.       You must keep your course selection secret so your classmates don’t register for the same one

b.      You can place a blind bid for a seat in the course (more about bidding later), but that is no guarantee you will get the course.

6.      If a required course is available it will present a time conflict with another course that you want to take.

7.      The other course you want to take will not be taught in the spring semester because:

a)      the instructor spends half the year at another prestigious university and is not available in the spring   

b)      the instructor will be going on sabbatical

c)      the fall course is a prerequisite for a spring course

8.      The Law School and the Business School hate the Kennedy School, so they operate on a completely different schedule and you must pledge your first born child and a kidney in order to cross register for their courses.

Once your schedule is figured out, and you have registered, the real fun begins!

You then have what are called shopping days.  Oh! How you wish you were shopping for shoes or designer handbags! But no, you’re shopping for classes.  After you’ve spent a week or so plotting your course schedule and getting course approvals, you are able to sit in a 30 minute introduction to your selected  course.

That’s when you find out that the course that sounded so awesome on paper is akin to watching paint dry on humid day. So everyone flocks to the more charismatic instructors and the classes become oversubscribed.  Then you must bid on the class.

Bidding in and of itself isn’t a bad thing.  The bad thing is that (wait for it…another list)

9.      You only have 1000 points to use across both semesters

10.  Some of the more popular  (and required) courses can use up 900 points each which means you’re possibly only getting into one of the course that require bidding

11.  Bidding doesn’t start until after the first day of classes.

a.       You are expected to have bought books, read literature and show up for a class you may not be in for the semester.

12.  If you don’t get into the class for which you bid, you have to scramble to round out your schedule with what’s left.

In my personal registration story, 3 of the 5 courses for which I registered are oversubscribed.  

One is a required course, another is cross listed with the law school and the last one will take a big chunk of my points in the bidding process.  Final course schedule TBD.

I think it’s time for another margarita.

I asked for a size "big"