Another Wednesday

Good Afternoon!

Another Wednesday is upon us. This week my prompt for my jurisprudence essay was: Does law claim to be morally obligatory? It's an interesting concept to think about, but difficult to argue when you have various philosophers pulling you in opposite directions. But I think that this week should go well, hopefully :) After finishing my essay I was going over the prompt for next week and suddenly realized that I only have 3 more essays to write for this class! How wonderful!!!! That made my morning.

This Friday I don't have my contemporary political thought tutorial because my don (professor) is out of town at a conference. So I will meet with him next week and extend my meetings until 8th week. My jurisprudence tutorial is supposed to end on 7th week but we have the option of presenting 7th week or of writing an extended essay and submitting it on 8th week. Originally I thought I would do the extended essay option, but now that I'm thinking about it I would rather just finish in 7th week and only have one essay to worry about the week before I leave.

I signed up for my last semester at Mason!!!! I can't believe that I am going to be graduating in the spring! It's been a quick 3 years now that I look back on it, although I'm sure I wasn't thinking that as everything was happening. But I achieved my goal of finishing in 3 years, sure it took a lot of hard work and a few sacrifices here and there but it was a good decision I believe. So in the spring I am taking: Psychology- Developmental Psychology, Statistics 250- Intro to Stats, Government 496- Honors Seminar, and finally Global and Community Health 205- International Health. Why all the health classes you ask? Well I am taking prerequisites for nursing school in the spring so that I can apply to VCU School of Nursing next winter (2010). I will have to take human anatomy and physiology while I am in Richmond but that shouldn't be a problem! (JP my dad said that you took stats at U of R, any advice?? I'd appreciate it!) This spring will be lightest class load since starting college!

My honors seminar is a class that select students are invited to take, there are 2 courses: 491 which is being held at GMU currently and 496 which is held in the Spring. After being accepted into this program, which basically means that you will graduate with departmental honors after writing an insane thesis, I told them that I would not be here in the fall to take the first course. They assured me that was fine and that I could pick up the spring course. However, what I wasn't told was the volume of work that the students are doing currently to prepare for the spring semester. I finally got in touch with the professor running the program this year, after several phone calls and unanswered emails, who was kind enough to send me the syllabus. :gasp!: After seeing the syllabus I was afraid that there would be no way for me to get on track for the spring. This semester they are creating: an annotated bibliography (basically a compilation of sources and a short description of why each source is relevant to your topic), a research proposal (including an abstract, introduction, methodology, relevance, etc), a project notebook, literature review, research methodology description, topic selection & supporting documents, and a research project presentation. PHEW! Was that enough for you?? Not to mention they are finding a faculty mentor who will essentially guide them through the research process this spring and give them their final grade for the course (at least that is what I understand). Obviously, I am here in Oxford already busting my hump to get this work done and the prospect of having to do all that work is daunting. Upon receipt of the syllabus from the professor, I sent him an email asking what portions of the syllabus I would need to complete for the spring. I also emails a professor asking if he could be my faculty adviser.

I suppose it would be helpful to know what I am going to do my thesis on: Public Perceptions of Muslims in Western Europe, The United Kingdom, and The United States After September 11, 2001. I did a research paper here on the same subject but without the US portion. I am a government and international studies major so I thought it would be appropriate to do a comparative study and to base my research on something that I did here in Oxford. So we will see if that is an acceptable topic. Hopefully I will hear back from the professor about being my faculty adviser... his interests pair pretty well with the area of research I want to do and he is quite worldly.

Tonight there is a drinks party (what we would call a cocktail party) with our adviser here and other students and tutors. It's from 6-7:30, so some housemates and I decided we would go for a little while as we all have a good deal of work to get done by the end of the week. I can't believe it's Wednesday already! I have only 7 more papers to write while I'm here! Sure that equates to roughly 49 pages of writing but it seems like nothing! Only 31 days away from my family and fiancé! I can't wait to get home and hug everyone, that's what I miss the most: hugs. And of course I can't wait to eat the feast that my dad promises me will be waiting when I get back! :) I hope you are all doing well and that life's little obstacles aren't getting in your way too much!

I think I will end the rest of my blog entries with a quote. Here is today's:
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer
- Robert Frost