The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

I have realized that some things never change- like when my parents used to nag me to do my homework before I could play, so I could play without interruption later.

Now I am on my own and don't have anyone to remind me to do my homework, which is both good and bad.

Like a good girl I did my History of Urban Planning homework so I could have fun this weekend. (my legal environment of planning book has yet to show up despite my purchase of expedited shipping)

I decided to save my readings for Sustainable Cities until tonight so that the readings would be fresh in my mind. Little did I know that while the readings are "recommended"- some of my classmates are reading the articles in depth and presenting on them- they are all reallllly long. Thank God for footnotes and bibliographies, but I am still slugging my way through a twenty-page paper on the controversy surrounding the terms "sustainability" and "sustainable development" (analysis to follow- if I survive this) that I started last Thursday. But owing to Facebook and my new computer and new place with wi-fi I got a little distracted and didn't finish it in one go.

I also have found it a bit hard to swallow in places. One of my favorite bits is about how some author considers sustainability "ecological socialism." Ah academia, the last haven for socialists. But have those so-called socialists ever really considered what socialism in action is really like? If they want to know, they could talk to pretty much anyone born after 1920 in Eastern Europe and how much "fun" their lives have been. (excluding the lucky girls and boys who were able to snag modeling contracts and I think Putin is a little biased. But that man is scary- even and especially with his shirt off, so I won't say anything against him.)

(this is just him fishing!!! for heaven's sake. Why does it make me think of Deliverance!?

Oh yeah, probably because of this picture that scares both me and the editor in chief of GQ. (I can't find the specific edition that the editor's letter mentions that seeing Vladimir Putin shirtless makes Jim Nelson more than a little nervous, but it's in there- just not preserved in cyberspace.)

I thought that my undergrad professor's babbling on and on about semiotics and Ferdinand de Saussure and his "signifiers" and "signifieds" were painful exercises in academia, but this might win king of the hill. And something tells me there's going to be a LOT more of this!

Thank God for Dad's devotion to Stephen Covey and his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People- some of it just might have stuck :P cuz I know Saussure sure didn't! OK, gotta keep reading. . .

My First Week- a recap

People have asked how my first week has gone, and overall, it has been great.

I have met a lot of interesting people from all over, and from other disciplines as well. One of my roommates/housemates- the British term flatmate would probably be more appropriate- is a doctoral candidate in bio-med from Tucson. I met a girl from the Bay Area who worked for Google and now is a geriatrics major. I don't know if major is the right word for people pursuing their master's, but I have yet to find a better term, though I am open to suggestion :P

A lot of the people in my program, urban planning, are sustainable land use, which is good to know, though I think we all have different goals for what we would like to end up doing with our degree.

I have heard people say that it's hard to find an L.A. native, but I don't think that they're asking in the right circles. I think those people are talking about Hollywood. The girl whose parents own the house I am renting a room from is an L.A. native and I met a guy at our program's mixer who was born and raised in Orange County.

A lot less people than I thought are opting for transportation, which I found interesting as infrastructure is such a big issue with the Obama administration right now due to all our aging bridges, highways, etc.,

We all come from different backgrounds, but our prior academic studies and their connection to our current passion is interesting. For example, one person that I met last night at the mixer is doing his concentration in transportation, and if memory serves, and if I heard him correctly over the incredibly loud and even worse "music" he said that he was a chem and micro-bio major. I asked him why and how he made the leap to urban planning and he said that he had been working on something insert science words here- the reverb drowned it out- something about making fuels that were more efficient or something.

We have several philosophy as undergrad majors people, which I really thought was an interesting leap. I'll have to hunt them down and ask them what changed their course in direction.

And as much as I hated moving around as a kid, it has really helped me both in my profession and also being able to relate to people. I was able to talk with a person who has lived here in L.A. for nine years, but came from Iowa, I was also able to talk with another person who was a self-proclaimed "Mr. Hartford" and I was able to call him on his bluff. Turns out he really is from Hartford, CT, not Avon, or Glastonbury, etc., I connected with an old friend on Facebook who I went to high school with in Connecticut, but now lives in Madison, WI, even though she spent her whole life in Massachusetts.

Class commentary

When I first registered for classes I thought, this is silly- why can't I sign up for a bunch of classes? Why do they only recommend that you start with 8-10-12 credits? Oh, now I see your point.

I am taking Sustainable Cities on Mondays, (only, having shown up on Wednesday with no one there- read your schedule genius!) which as I have had only one class so far I can't really comment on it, other than the professor seems very well educated and knows what he's talking about, which is always good. And it is "seminar style," so we do a lot of reading between classes and then apparently come back and sit at a long conference table. Though it pays to show up early as there are more chairs and students that would like to sit in them than there is room at the table. Oops.

Luckily for me, can I sound a little smug?, the building that my class is in is literally right across the street from where I live and it's only about a ten minute walk to class, getting up to the 4th floor, included.

Tuesday/Thursday is my history of urban planning and legal environment of planning classes- back to back, hence my death race to get to legal on time, which is significantly farther than I'd like. Fortunately, a good majority of my history class also goes to the legal class.

My history class is taught by the former department chair, but due to inevitable department reshuffles now no longer holds that particular position and I think oversees the undergrad division. The class is a little different than I'd pictured it in my head. But then again so was my visual culture, which had nothing to do with say, ads on TV and everything to do with semiotics and Levi-Straus, not the jeans guy! The class has started out being grounded in theory with Kevin Lynch and Spiro Kostof, two of the first theorists. My syllabus says we're going to be talking about Chicago and Irvine, so party on.

My legal class is a LOT more fun than I ever imagined it would be. My working knowledge of the law outside the basic amendments and Illinois work comp is pretty limited. I know I've never been able to talk my way out of a ticket that's for sure.

So, I was a tad apprehensive, thinking that I was going to have to commit a lot of statutes and dates and laws to memory. Nope. But my class has helped make my sit-in's on the site plan reviews in Visalia make a lot of sense.

Now I know why, for example, Dennis, the city manager (?) always added that the developer needed to submit an EIR (environmental impact report) after he'd discussed all of the other codes like fire and health and safety. Also, my professor is a hoot.

He has all these sly remarks that makes one think one is watching an old movie like the Man Who Came to Dinner or a Marx Brothers. Example:

"I used to live in Kansas. But being in the Midwest, I don't really consider that living."

Being slightly anal and definitely a little OCD I have marked all of my major assignments on a giant dry-erase board that I found on the side of the road and promptly Lysol'ed the heck out of before bringing it inside.

I figure that it's dumb to try to read too far ahead, especially for my history and legal classes as I know I need Sloane to break down whatever we read for his class and Kushner definitely can break a case down into sound bytes.

But it is comforting knowing exactly what will be expected and how to budget my time.

I have work-study, which won't make or break me, but I would like that extra X $ alloted to me. And I have applied for a reading tutoring program, one of whose schools is literally right across the street from me- so fingers crossed!

The second half of the semester I swap history & legal for theory (planning, of course) & stats- ack! Luckily, my stats professor announced that he hadn't taken stats himself since he was in school, so we won't get weighed down in a lot of extra superfluous stuff.

I'm fairly confident (even if my pater familia is not) that I will do well in that class as I have always preferred large groups of numbers, especially of concrete data that I could use rather than 8% of 3/4 of 250- if you know the answer great, I don't care. But if you want me to explain why it is important that we build housing for the needs of the 35% of the population that are married, but with no children, the seniors that make up 20%, the singles that compromise 30% of the population and not just the 15% of the two-parent, married with children population for whom suburbia is designed.

Plus, the class's full name is statistics and arguing from data- so all those junior high debate team competitions and trying to sound like I knew what euthanasia was will come in handy too!

Notes from the Underground, or more like the hyper-manicured grounds

For those of you who are unaware, after a long and arduous process, I am officially a first year grad student at USC, or S-C, as they call it here, now enrolled in the school of PPD- Planning, Policy & Development- with an emphasis on sustainable land use i.e. go green! More green building materials, more access to mass transit, building environments that promote a better standard of living for all people, etc.,

I am still getting used to seeing kids clad- willingly- in apparel (and not just the athletic kind) that bears the school's logo and/or colors.

At my art school, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) to wear the apparel sold at the bookstore was to be met with indifference, or why did you spend $60 on that hoodie?!

There are probably a thousand "beach cruiser" bikes here too- in just about every color imaginable- though they tend toward the citrus hues and a lot of Pepto-Bismol pink. These bikes would get you laughed out of any self-respecting "real" bike shop- one gear!? you've got to be kidding me! But they're happy to sell them to you on Main Street in Santa Monica for $300+ a pop. Ouch.

It is also "rush" week at school this week i.e. sorority Barbie Yup, every stereotype you think of when the word "sororities" comes up is pretty much here. I am obligated to say tho, that not all sororities are like that. As one of my best friends is both a self-proclaimed metalhead and member of a very non-Barbie-ish sorority.

But it is a beautiful campus- really freakin beautiful- I can't decide which is my favorite building- pictures to follow- and the faculty are top-notch.

It's nice to have pretty buildings to look at as I engage in a death sprint from my Tuesday class of the History of Urban Planning in Ralph and Goldy Lewis Hall to um, I call it Tapien, which is about a 1/4 mile away, which wouldn't be bad, except I only have ten minutes between classes- thanks to a last-minute scheduling change.

I like to pop in my earbuds and crank up the ol' ipod, but I have to be mindful of the maintenance, grounds, and other staff who whiz around on their little electric cars, driving like the maniacs that they and every other driver are in the City of Angels- hello! I pay your salary- yes you! Would it kill you to slow down? At least the carts are electric.

Some kids also ride their skateboards, which I possess absolutely no experience in, and only have admiration for them as they navigate around the swarms of bodies. I'd like to learn, but I'm pretty sure that I do not possess the requisite inner-ear balance necessary not to kill myself.

I've been able to watch the USC band practice their songs and I must say that it is quite inspiring, think "Chariots of Fire". Though again, as a former art school attendee I simply cannot comprehend the hoopla surrounding the Trojan football team, nor the desire to fork over $160 of my student loan dollars to attend 6 home games. Um fight on?

I can know pick out an undergrad from a grad student at sixty paces, the Lauren Conrad wannabees don't count. Nor the guys who hope to be the next Brody Jenner *shudder* I thought they broke the mold. Some of the guys it is a little harder- facial hair is not a surefire indicator, though it usually points to underclassman. But it amazes me how little I have in common socially with the vast majority of these people- even the seniors. We have different attitudes on cell phones, ipods, and even laptops- all of the aforementioned items were not "givein's" when I was their age- they were all pricey, techy gadgets that I could live without, not something that everyone and their grandma (!) have. I think the fact that we are carbon-based life forms are the only thing that we have in common. Cuz it certainly ain't music.

So, there, in a nutshell, is the USC social campus.

This Better Not Be Fatal

So, I have officially completed my first week of grad school without harm or loss of limb- wooh!

I realized that I only posted one entry for July, and August is almost over now too. But in my defense, I moved down to LA and settled in, which despite having done this more times than I can remember, I still do everything at the last minutes :P And yes, having a lot of "stuff" doesn't make the process any easier. Luckily, one of my new roommates is a kindred spirit who understands the psychologically soothing effects of familiar baubles.

Anyway, I am now the proud new owner of a brand spanking new Macbook and with a steady connection, I hope to use this forum as a way to present what I have been learning at my very expensive school, partially due to the insistence of my pater familia, but also partially, hopefully for my peers, who can serve as a regulating system- letting me know if I am off-base, was sleeping when the professor made a point that I consequently misinterpreted, etc.,

I am very excited about my classes- summary to follow :)

I have also developed a terminal case of adult-itis- I took it upon myself to clean my shared bathroom, which didn't look like it had seen a sponge since I-don't-want-to-think-about-it. Now it is all sparkle-y clean and the trash isn't higher than the toilet tank- gross, I know. But my landlord is really chill, so it balances out.

I know that you can't go home again, but once you start to notice that things are dirty and actually take steps to clean up, can you go back?! Time will tell! Watch this space!