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April 20, 2004
Fluff Piece
Graduate School basically sucks. But it does not always suck. And the things that are great about grad school are not readily available on the outside. Today, either I neglected to notice all the usual crap that makes me feel bad, or I had a really good day.
In Comparative Constitutionalism, we talked about South Africa. But before that, and during, we talked about land reform and redistribution in Zimbabwe. We were fortunate to have in the seminar a grad student from Kenya who had spent some time there. She spoke of the democratic pressures on Mugabe to reform land policies there.
Her interlocutor spoke in defense of global capital. He hung out the old canard "Who are these capitalists? They are investors, people, whose rights also need to respected." True enough, but since when does one get to claim title to ill-gotten gains? Needless to say, the two of them did today's heavy lifting in that class.
The heavy lifting in my other class came from Fritz Mondale, who is used to heavy lifting. He spoke off the cuff, but he answered questions pretty well. He has certainly been around. What I found fascinating is how easily he fell into campaigning mode; it is as if the technique is so familiar and has been so successful for him that he can't avoid it. His address to me was "Who are you? What do you do? What's your story?," and then he listened attentively. He exuded almost enough charm to make me forget all the internal contradictions in what he talked about.
The red cherry on top of the day was that elusive prize: gushing praise from a colleague. OK it was the TA, but what the Hell, she grades my papers. Or at least makes the pencil comments. When she asked me about what I plan on writing for a dissertation, she said she looked forward to reading it someday. I told her not to wait up for it to get published, and that it was likely going to be pretty dry stuff. She said "I always look forward to reading your papers. There are always good papers, and then yours comes along. They are always so well-written." Given that I considered my last paper a total piece of crap, I marvel at what else she has to read.
Now, lest you be tempted to hurry up and apply to a graduate program of your own, keep in mind that these kinds of day are bloody rare in these parts. Solace more often comes in the form of other blogs than from my coursework.
Posted by Underblog at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)