College Life Is Not Conducive To Journaling

Today is what, March 5th? Yes. Tomorrow, I have my first midterm, in Disciplines and Methods of Geography, or Disco Meth for short. I feel adequately prepared for it, although I will be spending the next several hours reviewing my notes (paltry though they are - I've never been a fantastic note-taker, but I'd like to believe I'm getting better at remembering details and big ideas). Disco Meth isn't the most interesting class, as it is mostly just the application and analysis of statistics to geographic problems, but it's required for the major and Professor Smith is a nice woman and the TAs explain everything if you ask. I'd be doing better if I asked them. For instance, on my first two problem sets, which I completed on my own the nights before they were due, I got Cs. On the last two, for which I went in for help, I got As. I've still got another 8 problem sets due in the semester, and I intend on acing them all. The midterm is I think a quarter of my grade, so I hope I do well on it. Other than that, I only have one other midterm - for my IS seminar, Paradigms of Global Leadership, but that is after spring break. My days seem suspiciously easy, which will change during spring break when I'll begin work on the multiple final projects I have, one for each class.

On the IS end of things, my unofficial major, things are going smoothly. In Paradigms of Global Leadership, I gave a presentation on Monday on The Just Prince by Muhammad ibn Zafar al-Siqilli, a Sicilian Muslim writing in the 12th century about the exercise of power and good governance. It's an interesting book, especially reading it having recently read The Prince by Machiavelli. The Just Prince is a lot less Machiavellian than The Prince in that it heavily incorporates morality, religion and not always inducing fear amongst the populace to maintain control. It's also interesting that it was written 300 years before Machiavelli's book, and was probably unknown to the Florentine. I get to present on the 2nd half of the book next Monday. Professor Samatar also said on one of his many inspirational jeremiads that "students should be intimidated by their professors, but in the end ought to kill them." He quickly qualified that he didn't mean this literally, but rather that a professor ought to inspire a student to work hard enough to become smarter than the professor themself in the end. I think that might take a bit of effort on my part, but I'm working on it.

My other IS class, Culture and Global Capitalism, is progressing about as excitingly as hitting my hand with a hammer would be. Professor Ciafone is nice, but this is the first time she's taught this class and it lacks a lot of thematic structure, so we vacilate from neo-Marxist critical theory about "what are things" and "can or cannot all things be bought" to an economics perspective history of the corporation written by the editors of the Economist (and who are authors of The Right Nation: The Rise of Conservatism in America, a book I received as a joke present for my last birthday from Emilio). Today, we went to the Mill City museum, which was interesting because I'd never been before. We met with a retired miller, who has worked in various capacities as an international consultant and an engineer and was a wealth of knowledge. That was very neat, and I would've liked to have heard more from him had time permitted. I have to write up a 4 page discussion review by next Friday, which unless I forget about it until Friday morning, ought to be a sinch. Is that how you spell sinch?

Urban GIS is going well - I completed the data compilation for a map showing the spatial trends of foreclosures in North Minneapolis. I've attached a picture. It's a preliminary map, so it lacks a lot of the details and clarity that a finished product would have. It's also not fully overlayed, so the data compiled is still raw - in other words, I haven't finished tinkering with it. The yellow are properties that have been foreclosed at least once in the years of 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, or 2008, while the orange represents twice, and red represents between three and four times. My goal is to make a map that presents where properties have been foreclosed upon more than once in multiple years - i.e., X property was foreclosed in 2002, 2005 and 2008, or something like that. I'll also be working on a second map that will show the value of foreclosed properties at their time of sale to the bank, but that is entirely theoretical at the moment.

(Figure 1: A map of foreclosed properties in North Minneapolis, 2002, 2005-2008)

Beyond school, nothing much is new. I booked myself a flight to go to New Mexico to visit Grandma Anne and Judy from June 10th to June 17th, and I am quite excited about that. I am also looking for a house for myself and my three future housemates, Ian, Chelsea and Joe, the latter of which I lived with my sophomore year. That is all.