June 13, 2008
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey…right?
I woke up at dawn two days ago in my bare room, only a sleeping bag and thin foam pad under me.My luggage and guitar case rested against the wall.The day before, I had rented a truck and moved all of my belongings to my new place, along with a good portion of my new roommate’s stuff.It went off without a hitch, and I even had time to catch the second half of Game 4 with some friends, followed by an amazing pizza at Gianni’s.
Yesterday didn’t turn out to be as successful.I should have known that it was going to be rough when I squeezed myself into the back seat of the Monterey Airbus van with 9 other passengers. (When will Monterey get reliable, cheap, comfortable service to the local airports?)Rising fuel costs and ridiculous estimates of average height and girth put my knees in my armpits and me in a bad temper.Two hours and fifteen minutes later I practically bolted out of the van and into San Francisco Airport.I had 30 minutes before my plane.
Getting through security was the second portent of the day.Having forgotten that I had water in my water bottle, I was forced to chug it in line while clutching passport and boarding pass, and trying not to look too conspicuous.As I was swinging my pack onto my back, I knocked over my guitar, which fell heavily into the legs of a British guy in front of me; I also simultaneously unhooked the elastic divider from its stanchion, which zipped into its base with a whoosh.The British guy gave me a “What is your problem?” look and inched away from me.Fitting the divider into its slot again, I mustered a solid apology and began making my way out of my shoes.Once through the screening I shoved everything into my pockets, dropping coins on the ground in front of said British guy, pulled on my shoes, and ran down to the gate and onto the flight just in time.
We then proceeded to sit on the runway for two hours.It was an uneventful flight to Dulles, but my connection to Vermont was going to be tight, so I jumped off the plane and onto one of those Star Wars-like people movers and ran to the gate, only to find that the flight was delayed by an hour.At last I would have some time to relax.
It turned out that I would get more than I was asking for.The departure kept getting pushed back due to mechanical problems, settled on 1:00 a.m. before finally being cancelled. At midnight.So I trundled off to customer service and made a reservation for today—Saturday—at 5 p.m. with one of the harried, heroic airline people who get stuck with midnight shift at the airport on bad weather days.Clutching my hotel and food vouchers like a man tossed into the sea, I hustled off to catch the hotel shuttle.
On the way I sat and talked with a kid no more than eighteen who was returning from a 6-month deployment in Afghanistan.Good-natured and talkative, the guy told me he had been in transit for nine days, and was just trying to get back home for a two-week leave.He said it would take at least the same amount of time to get back to Afghanistan as it had to get here, and that he was already cutting into his time off because of delayed flights. We talked about what he thought of his deployment (“the food is great”) and he expressed some candid views on the state of the Army and the Presidency, which I chalked up to both unpleasant experience and youthful bluster.I couldn’t help thinking how crazy it is that someone so young is off fighting our wars in Central Asia.
I also decided to shut up about my travel troubles, but my resolve quickly broke when the woman at the hotel front desk said that there were no more rooms left.We were shuttled off to another hotel, and I finally fell into bed at 2 a.m.
After waking up this morning, I told myself that today would be different.I wasted the morning trying to get in touch with Middlebury by email and phone, eating breakfast and watching TV, then got to the airport several hours early to find my luggage.It, ironically, had made it successfully to Burlington on a flight that morning. I went to the gate and waited, warily watching dark clouds gather over the squatting aircraft—then the sky cracked open and unleashed a downpour.A few minutes later, my flight to Burlington was canceled.
At customer service:Hi, yes, I’m here again, still trying to get to Burlington. Do I want to wait until tomorrow morning for the next flight with your airline?In no way, shape, or form.I’m eerily patient?Yes, thank you.
Taxi voucher and connecting flight secured, I walked back to the Star Wars-esque people mover, trundled to the main terminal, hailed a cab and called my transportation in Vermont to let them know, again, that I wasn’t going to be on time.Hopefully ReaganNationalAirport would hold better luck for me.
So, here I sit, waiting for my third—I will call it “potential”—flight to Burlington, nearly 36 hours after leaving sunny, non-raining, non-mechanically inadequate, perfectly enjoyable Monterey, California.
I am writing all this not to comment on the state of our transportation system, or the difficulty of getting from one small town in California to another, much smaller town in Vermont.I am actually writing to say that anyone applying to MIIS who wants to work on their language skills should seriously think about applying to Middlebury’s summer language schools before starting at MIIS.Last summer was an incredible learning experience, and I expect this one to be no different.
Just avoid flying on Friday the 13th.
May 28, 2008
These two weeks in Kyoto have been hot and muggy; today the sky is darkening for rain.
It has been a year since I was last here, and this summer is much like last: visiting friends, walking in the mountains, and eating good food.It is a welcome respite from schoolwork, but I haven’t been able to keep myself out of the bookstores altogether.
Two things have caught my attention since being here.The first is that it’s nice to be hot and sweaty in the summertime.According to the Weather Channel’s website, Monterey is cold and windy.Kyoto, by contrast, is blazing during the daytime, the concrete and steel radiating heat like an oven.Getting into the mountains every day has become essential.The city is surrounded on three sides by mountains, and there is a trail of about 50 km that winds through shrine- and temple-studded forests on all sides.Only a few minutes into the woods and the temperature drops considerably.
This network of trails is my favorite thing about Kyoto.Growing up in the Southeast, I spent a lot of time wandering around in the foothills, only seeing the ocean during the occasional summer trip.The sea is beautiful, especially around the Monterey Peninsula, but the mountains have their own special place in my heart.There is really no getting to the mountains in Kyoto; they surround the city.Walk or ride your bike just a few minutes out of downtown, and you are at the foot of the mountains.These are not spectacular peaks a la Everest or K2; rather they are low, crinkled hills formed by earthquake and volcanic activity.Temperate forests cover all of the mountains, though the only original growth is in protected areas surrounding temples and shrines.
It was Japan’s forestry practices that first introduced me to the effects of policy on the natural environment.When I was living here after college I began to notice differences between the forests and mountains here and those I had grown up in the United States.Because of a similar latitude, these forests in Japan were familiar in many ways: the original growth was deciduous, and the fauna were variations of what I knew as a kid.I came to Japan and saw snakes, lizards, wild pigs, deer, moss, ferns and slime molds.All of these can be found in the forests of the Appalachian mountains.What struck me as different however, was the cedar plantations that dominated some areas.Due to aggressive reforestation policies, Japan is now considered to be one of the most forested countries in the world, but biodiversity has suffered.The cedar forests are quiet, even spookily so. When I walked through one yesterday, I heard no birds and noticed that the sunlight didn’t reach the ground.I felt like I had entered the land of the dead.
On top of that, such plantations have been implicated in the large hay fever epidemics that affect the population here every year.It was thinking about these effects of government policy that first clued me in to the effect that policy decisions can have on natural and human systems.Every time I come back here, it is a study in comparative environmental policy.
To go back to my original train of thought, the second thing that has struck me since coming back after a year in Monterey, is that my language skills have improved.One of the reasons that I was attracted to MIIS was the language component.Although I sometimes hear complaints from other students that the language courses are not well integrated into the curriculum, I have been very happy with my experience.I have had the chance in Professor Matsuo’s courses to study what is most interesting to me, and to read texts and do presentations on subjects ranging from climate change to Japan’s energy policy to differences between American and Japanese views of terrorism and national security.And coming to a Japanese-speaking environment again, I find that I am able both to interact more intelligently with people I meet, and to understand resources that were previously inaccessible.
This may seem like an insignificant achievement, but I feel like it speaks to the effectiveness of the language program at MIIS.
I only have a few more days here, so I’m off to wander the mountains again.
May 15, 2008
My first year is over. Thank God (and I mean that in a good way). Final papers and presentations consumed me for the last month-and-a-half, and I was ecstatic when I submitted the last one just two days ago. Before I knew it, everyone was off, trickling away to start their summers. And I was free to think about other things besides school.
My summer has started in earnest. I am sitting here on a plane headed for Japan, the map on the tiny screen in front of me showing that we are just east of the Sea of Okhotsk. A great circle route from San Francisco to Osaka. I’ll spend several weeks in Kyoto visiting friends, and will then head back to California for a few days before going to Middlebury Language School for the remainder of the summer. Though I’m excited for the next few months, the intensity of the end of the school term hasn’t worn off yet and I just want to relax. In theory, that is exactly what I will be doing in Kyoto.
When I was applying to schools, I particularly wanted to know the kinds of jobs that graduates got, and the kinds of things that continuing students did in the summer. I know MIIS keeps some data on this, but I thought it would be useful for applicants to see not only the internships that people are doing, but other opportunities they have carved out for themselves as well. The following is very partial, compiled from my informal poll of others in my classes, but I think it is representative of the kinds of opportunities that MIIS students get.
Some of the organizations where people are interning:
State Department Environment and Energy Desk in China
State Department in Guatemala
UN Habitat in Rio, Brazil
UN in New York
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Tokyo
California Energy Commission
Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA) in Niigata, Japan
Medical interpretation at Stanford Medical School
MIIS Recruitment Office in Monterey
MIIS Sustainability Initiative in Monterey
Private equity company in Taiwan
Textile industry in Ghana
The Breakthrough Institute
Michigan conservation organization
City of Monterey Waste Management District
City of Pacific Grove Mayor’s Office
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
Other plans for the summer:
Middlebury language school (Japanese, Russian, Chinese)
Global Majority conflict resolution training seminars in Costa Rica and Jordan
Traveling Southeast Asia to research tiger conservation and reserve management systems
From what I can tell, most of these are either unpaid internships or, in the case of travel, self-funded. There are opportunities for paid internships, but there is also a lot of competition for them. Among the people I have talked to, there was a general sense that, as graduate school students, paid internships and opportunities should be more widely available, which I would have to agree with. Most of us, and perhaps many of you, will be taking out loans for school, and a paid internship is one of the best ways to get experience in your field and get through the summer when loans are not available.
Everyone I talked to seemed happy with their summer plans. I think we all got turned down at least once for an internship or job, but the list tells the story: people are doing cool things over the summer.
Opportunities for summer funding and the quality of a school’s connections with good organizations are factors to consider in choosing a graduate school. Hopefully the above list will give some sense of the opportunities that MIIS students have found through their own initiative and with the help of professors. The career office also has a more complete list of statistics for those interested.
Last week a large group of students in the IEP program went up to San Francisco to a conference co-sponsored by UC Hastings Law School and MIIS. The subject was, not surprisingly, climate change. I know, I know. Not another conference on this topic. I can almost hear your groans.
But I have to say that I was impressed by the quality of the speakers and the content. I also felt that MIIS was well represented. It wasn’t a conference to debate the science; there isn’t a need to do that anymore. Neither was it a conference focused solely on technical solutions to mitigate climate change; that, too, has been done. The subject was adaptation and innovation as strategies for dealing with climate change impacts, a more interesting topic.
Two things struck me about the conference. First, the discussion diverged from the usual focus on mitigation to a recognition that adaptation and mitigation must go hand in hand. Several people mentioned that, until a few years ago, you couldn’t even talk about adaptation in some circles because it detracted from the focus on taking action to stop climate change. Well, it is now clear that it is already here. And the change in focus to include adaptation allows us to consider the human dimensions that have often been left out in favor of technological, economic or political arguments.
This is connected to my second point, namely that climate change has not only a human dimension, but also a human rights dimension. Edward Cameron, representing the Embassy of the Maldives, demonstrated forcefully the possibility of major migration impacts from climate change, and while this is not necessarily a new idea, it is one that is often lost in the debate. As a representative of small island states (SASs), Cameron was clear in making the point that technological solutions like sea walls are simply too costly to adequately protect all of the low-lying islands of the world. A lot of people will simply have to relocate, and this will obviously have reverberating impacts for them and for the communities that they move into.
The widening of the discussion brought forth more clearly the interconnections between the climate system and human systems, and I believe this is the right focus. I take a humanistic stance on environmental and other global problems, meaning that the protection of human health, safety, and dignity are core values for me. I have found a lot of like-minded people at MIIS in this regard, even if we do approach the topic from different angles.
This ties into my last point that, even though people in the MIIS community are working on really interesting and complex global problems, not much attention is being given to interdisciplinary approaches. The point was made at the climate change conference that making interconnections between disciplines allows us to “pitch” our issues from different perspectives depending on the audience. Yet this kind of cross-disciplinary pollination is not really happening at MIIS. We are often “siloed” in our disciplines, with little interaction across schools or even within the larger policy school.
Part of our difficulty in addressing not only climate change, but other global issues, is that our thinking isn’t up to the task. In other words, we know what is happening or likely to happen with climate change and other issues like international terrorism, but we have little understanding of how to build an integrated response to these problems. Making cogent and tractable interconnections between “siloed” disciplines can, I believe, yield important insights into solutions.
I can't believe Spring Break ended only one week ago. Most people left Monterey for home or to take a short trip, but I stuck around to work on a few papers and to get some rest.
The best laid plans of mice and men.
The first Friday of the break, I went with some friends from the policy school to have dinner at another classmate’s house in Santa Cruz and then go hear some bluegrass. When I was living overseas, one of the only truly American cultural artifacts that I felt proud to share with people was music, particularly bluegrass and blues. And as both have a long history in my home state of Tennessee, I felt like I was sharing something about myself at the same time.
The band turned out to be mediocre—too much “inspired jam band” musical noodling for my taste—but it was refreshing to get out of Monterey for a night and blow off some steam.
I spent Saturday on a newly discovered disc golf course with a buddy. Sandwiched between busy Munras Avenue on one side and a shopping center on the other, I was afraid I would either hit a car with the disc or have to go diving into the poison oak after an errant toss.
Even though it was a sunny Saturday, we had the course pretty much to ourselves. It was great to be outside after weeks of rain and gloom and stress. I hadn’t played disc golf before, and I got hooked immediately. The next day I went down to the Trailside Café on Cannery Row and bought some discs from the owner, who is also a member of the local disc golf club, the Monterey Stinging Jellies.
Sunday and Monday came and went in similar fashion, and I succeeded in ignoring the plaintive voice of papers calling out to me. “Write me,” they said. “Tomorrow,” I grumbled. This strategy worked until Tuesday, when a fog of anxiety finally overtook me. I started in earnest.
My apologies for the gory details, but I thought a sampling of paper topics might be instructive for prospective students out there. For Scorse’s Environmental and Natural Resource Economics class, I wrote a paper on the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation as presented in the Stern Review. The assignment was to discuss a cost-benefit analysis or valuation study related to the environment, showing that we know how to tell good studies from bad. Seemed straightforward. It wasn’t.
For Zarsky’s International Environmental Law class, my group and I wrote a short policy brief on improving the effectiveness and implementation of local Agenda 21 initiatives. We just met tonight to go over our presentation for Thursday’s class.
I also wrote a presentation for my Japanese class. The class follows the Monterey Model, meaning that different language groups meet on a weekly basis in Irvine Auditorium to give presentations about a common topic. The class currently includes students of French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and occasionally German and Chinese.
The unique aspect of this class is that the presentations are simultaneously interpreted into the various languages by students in the Translation and Interpretation Program. This semester’s theme is terrorism, which, while not my specialization, has been interesting to learn about because of its timeliness. My part of the presentation dealt with differing views on the nature of terrorism in Japan and the United States, and discussed Japan’s potential role in the unfortunately named “War on Terror.”
Although Spring Break turned out to be really busy, I still had time for a mid-week bonfire with some friends on Del Monte Beach. Most of them were MIIS graduates who found good jobs and stayed in town. Looking out over the Bay on a moonlit night in early spring, warming my back with the fire, it is easy to see how someone could make that choice (at least the staying part; I’ll leave the rest to the job gods).
When I told my friends what I had left to do, they all agreed that they didn’t want to go back to school again. I nodded my head in agreement, and then went back home to write a paper.
About a week ago, after a particularly tiring day, I put on my neglected running shoes and slowly made my way out the door.
It’s hard for me to get motivated in the winter. It’s dark when I wake up in the morning; it’s dark when I get home from class. I usually just want to make dinner and go to sleep. Yet the late February night was pulling me out the door, and I felt like I wanted to shed my post-class lethargy.
I jogged for a few blocks with the headlights of oncoming cars in my eyes and then turned right, heading down the hill towards the water. The wind was blowing and a cool mist hung in the air as the last of the tourists huddled themselves into the surf-and-turf places along Cannery Row. I continued past the entrance to the Aquarium, stepping over the border into Pacific Grove. It had rained a few days before, and the trodden dirt path was a network of puddles. I splashed through the water, listening to the white noise of the waves crashing to my right.
Past Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station the path opened up, and I looked towards Lovers Point in the distance, watching the flashlights of late-night walkers bobbing rhythmically up ahead. I came parallel to the Seven Gables Inn, the light from inside spilling out into the ocean like a welcoming carpet. At Lovers Point I stopped for a moment to look up the coast towards Seaside, and further on, Santa Cruz.
As I continued on, my shoes falling heavily on the pavement here at the edge of the bay, I was struck by the simple pleasure of being out there under the night sky. There was nothing else to want, nothing else to do. Only body-breath-sky-sea.
Back at home, blowing on my cold hands and looking forward to a hot shower, I realized how easily I get caught up in the cycle of home-school-work. Graduate school is intense. It’s full—of reading and writing and places to be. I have realized that I need to disconnect from MIIS for at least a little while everyday, and I have found that succor in surprising places.
People complain about Monterey being too small, too expensive, too boring, too white, too old. Okay, so it’s no New York or Paris, no Seoul or Tokyo; but there are good things to be found once you take a second to pay attention. There’s the sunny park on the corner of Pacific and Scott with long stone benches perfect for mid-day napping. There is the network of trails on Fort Ord just asking to be bombed down on a bike. Then there are the walking paths by the beach at Asilomar and the jetty at Lovers Point. And Surfing and scuba, hiking and kayaking, all within a few minutes of downtown.
When friends from back East hear that I’m in Monterey, they all say what an awesome place it must be to live. I don’t know if I would say “awesome.” I just call it “home”, at least for a little while.
It must be some kind of law that a person can have either time or money, but not both. If you’re short of money, you can get a job; if you’re short of time, you can quit it.
Graduate school, however, seems to have its own internal laws: somehow it is possible to have both little time and little money.
How does this happen, you say? Well:
1. Grad school requires that you take courses.
2. Said courses cost a considerable amount of time and money.
3. Working to make some of this necessary money leaves you with less of the necessary time.
4. Not working during the school year leaves you with more time to study, but less money to...pay rent/take cool weekend trips/work for free during the summer at a fabulous organization in Washington, D.C., Brussels or Nairobi.
The funny thing is that I seem to spend a lot of time figuring out how to have more of both. For example, I spend time trying to think about way to get double benefits as cheaply as possible. I decided to live in New Monterey, which is about 1.5 miles from school. I don’t own a car, so I end up either biking or walking everyday. It takes only about 10 minutes by bike, and I get some good exercise on the daily round trip. Some people live in Marina or Seaside to purportedly save on rent, but when you factor in the cost of having a car (insurance, gas, repairs), I’m not sure it’s any cheaper, and they definitely don’t get to exercise sitting in the car.
Other suggestions to save money and/or time, gleaned from observations of current MIIS students:
· Shop the Tuesday Farmer’s Market on Alvarado Street!
· Check out the India Clay Oven "curry bar" at the Farmer’s Market for free bites. Double dippers should avoid the eagle-eyed naan-making guy.
· Buy a wetsuit and swim in the ocean. It’s cheaper than the city gym, and the pool is closing for two months, anyway.
· Live with your parents.
· Be a time searcher, not a planner (I actually don’t know what this means, but a friend says this works).
· Finish your program in three semesters (not recommended).
That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure I’ll be spending some more time on it tomorrow.
The remnants of my leisurely winter break have all but disappeared, and I’m realizing that the semester is going to be a busy one.
Compared to other programs in the policy school at MIIS, the International Environmental Policy program has a lot of core courses. Last fall as well as this spring, I’ve tried to take as many of these courses as I can, so that my second year is full of electives. That’s not to say that I’m not able to tailor my studies the way I want: the core courses provide a foundation and framework for writing about any topic. I’m also excited to be taking Jim Williams’ upper-level seminar on energy policy and climate change, which is being offered for the first time this semester.
I’m happy with the IEP program overall: I like the structure that it provides, the professors and other students seem excited about being here, and the material is interesting. This semester is the first time that the IEP program has had four full-time faculty members, which seems like a good critical mass for expanding the reach and impact of the program.
To give a taste of the semester, I’ll describe my Tuesday:
7 AM Got up for some exercise and to do some work before class.
10 AM Seminar course on terrorism by Professor Jeffrey Bale, interpreted simultaneously into five languages. I listened in Japanese.
12:15 PM Meeting about this weekend’s ski trip at Northstar.
Today I started my second semester in the International Environmental Policy (IEP) program. Five weeks off – it seems like so much longer. I’m definitely ready to jump back into classes, and I can feel the same sense of excitement in other people. Although I’ve been back in Monterey since the beginning of January, today was the first time I felt the campus has been fully alive since we left for winter break in mid-December.
Everybody waiting to go into Professor Zarsky’s International Environmental Law class was catching up on news from the break, and comparing schedules for the coming semester. People did some cool stuff: working trips to New Orleans and Belize, the Conservation Leadership Program in Monterey, a mediation training seminar at the local law school, a cross-country Greyhound adventure….
What impresses me about MIIS is the high level of energy it has for being such a small school. Everybody I know here has a burning desire to make a difference in the world, and that energy is palpable. Two years is such a short time, but it is just a doorway to other things.
But I still want to make the most of my time here. So, last week when a friend from the IEP program wanted to do some winter camping before classes started, I gladly piled in the car with a few other IEPers and drove the two hours to Pinnacles National Monument. Saturday was a perfect day: clear, blue skies provided stunning views from atop the massive boulders along the high peaks trail, and the sun warmed us later as we emerged from the underground caves.
We spent a cold night huddled around the campfire, trying to remember the names of the constellations. Wild turkeys woke me up the next morning, and I stumbled out of the tent to find my water jug frozen on the picnic table. Once the sun had warmed us up, we set off for another hike. We walked through a floodplain for a long time, eventually entering another set of caves through a slot canyon that looked like a Lord of the Rings set. Just when I thought we were alone in this place that seemed like the edge of some outer moon of Saturn, another group of MIIS students came up the trail.
Is it just me, or does MIIS make the world feel smaller?
