aufgenomenJournal of audio recordings and other infrequent updates

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. I can’t stand having had a half-working, un-updated blog up for so long. Sorry about that. I haven’t felt like I could write anything about my current goings-on until I wrote at least something about last term and me getting back from Germany. It has been a rough time. I couldn’t figure out if something was wrong with me the first month or two that I had been back, but I definitely felt overwhelmed and wasn’t sure why. My life is definitely more fast pace now that it was last year, and I have a lot more responsibilities. The university system is completely different. In Stuttgart a class met once a week for one hour at a time, so I had about an hour of class a day. The catch is that they usually hand out a reading list of 10-20 books that you should consider reading during the semester. None of them will you necessarily be tested on, but they have to do with what is being leaned, and well, “you do want to be a good scholar in your subject don’t you?” Other than that homework was limited, and you got to choose when you were able to catch up on reading. Now at Portland State I am back to quarters, three-month terms and usually with midterm exams or big papers. The extra work load at PSU wasn’t unexpected, and I think I could have handled it fine if it hadn’t been for the culture shock that I really wasn’t prepared for. I remember going to my friends Sage and Nathan’s birthday party the first week I was back and just not knowing what to do. I couldn’t tell where to interject comments and if people were really listening to what each other were saying.

I spend a lot of time reflecting on last year and I have fun thinking about the differences in culture and my daily life. I am also doing a lot better a PSU this term. I am taking PR for Non Profits, Structure of the English Language, and Comparative History of Economics. The PR class is a continuation of my senior capstone course that I started last term. We have learned a lot about how the news and journalists function, and we spend a lot of time just talking about the news and why they say things they way they do. I was hoping my grammar would be close to perfect when I finished with Structure, but it turns out it is more about deciphering the brain’s natural knowledge of how to put english together. The material is based on such strict and specific rules of how grammar works that I find myself writing hypothetical computer programs in class. The Comparative Economics class is crazy. We are basically looking at the different ways societies and cultures have functioned throughout time and around the world. My professor John Hall is really rad. He is the president of some bottle company, but is also really knowledgeable about climate change and is convinced that the free market is going to collapse in the near future! I am not taking any German, but Mr. Hall’s special interest happens to be Germany and it’s process of unification. He uses a German, re-sealable, glass beer bottle for water in class.

Well that is a decent update that makes me satisfied for the time being. There is of course a lot more I could say about Germany and getting back, but I like it to come out in stories. I had a great Valentine’s day without even getting to see any of my sweethearts, except for my mom who delivered a nice card this morning! And thanks for the potted flowers + chocolate dad. I am keeping the page simple until it gets a decent amount of content. For some reason it is less intimidating to update this way (I am typing the whole thing from SSH on my friends mac!). Now back to that ten-page economics midterm!

~Michael

P.S. Check out this hot R&B jam.