Commencement

Okay, I've finally got around to slamming final exercises at UVA. From what I understand the ceremony this year was better than the one in years past, due to the fact that it rained only very lightly the morning of our ceremony. To me, that didn't make the event much better. The initial problem was that it was really damn hot in the black gowns we were wearing.

This became exponentially worse as time passed during the commencement speeches that we had to sit through like inmates on a prison bus. The speeches were on all fronts pitiful. UVA President Casteen talked about some general stats about our graduating class and then went on to talk about UVA's commitment to equality and opportunity. Too bad he failed to mention his continued failure to support, even in principle, domestic partner benefits. I digress.

Next came the esteemed Virginia Senator, John Warner. I honestly didn't go into the ceremony biased against Warner and what advice he was to impart. He's not the worst Republican around and he has had a lot of unique life experiences. Well, I probably should have known better. His speech was laced with Republican propaganda. After opening remarks he promptly linked September 11th to the Iraq war. He then went on to give us a story of personal achievement and explain how we could go on to achieve whatever we wanted. He read us the admission letter that the UVA Law School sent him. In short, it said, "Mr. Warner, you scored in the bottom twentieth percentile, relative to your cohorts, but we're letting you in anyway. Don't mess this up." In other words, he was admitted to UVA Law because of his white privilege and didn't screw up. It was quite inspiring. Perhaps someday I too can be someone that achieves things from privilege instead of merit. As the speech continued everybody thought multiple times that it was over but Warner kept droning on about things. I titled his speech "The Five Encores."

After Warner finally finished the official conferring of degrees began. This didn't mean that you would go up and get a diploma. This was just the deans of the colleges having the degrees for their departments officially conferred by Casteen. This doesn't sound like it would take that long, but after having to endure the two preceding speeches, it was enough to make you wish you could be hit by a UTS bus. While the conferring of degrees was happening I overheard a girl behind me say to her friend, "Wouldn't it be weird if Thomas Jefferson came back to life to present some of the diplomas?" I told Kate Bedingfield that I wanted to stand up, raise my hand, and say, "Hey! You can't confer degrees for these people back here. There was somehow a fluke in the system."

Once that was done the President of the UVA Alumni Association got up to give a final pitch for joining the association. By this time the crowd couldn't take it anymore. There was audible grumbling when he got up to speak. When he pulled a John Warner and made us think his speech was finished when it wasn't, the entire crowd groaned.

After commencement we took some pictures on the North side of the Lawn.

Government Majors' Diploma Ceremony

After getting lunch at Baja Bean Co, I went to the glorious Memorial Gymnasium to receive my actual diploma. This went down exactly as I had predicted. Everybody lined up, went in, got their diploma, and left. It was definitely a "herd 'em in and get 'em out" operation. One interesting thing was that the guy two people behind me in line was completely wasted. While standing in line he talked back to professors and people trying to organize us. When not making a complete fool of himself in front of everybody, he would either hit on the girl behind me or say, "I just want to go drink beer all day and snort cocaine." Now there's a sure way to win over the ladies. It would have made my day if he tripped and fell on his face while walking across the stage to get his diploma. The one good part about the ceremony was that David Klein, my Political Analysis professor, handed me my diploma.

Graduation Night Party

After getting out of Mem I went home and took a nap. I then got ready for the graduation party that I had outside of my building. That part of the day was by far the best. Damn I miss my friends already.

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Okay, so I didn't even come close to making it from Mississippi to California in one day. I'm starting to have my doubts about being able to do it. I know that some people can drive for 20+ hours straight but after about 13 I personally start to go nuts. It's not that I'm tired, I just can't stand driving anymore. Ah well. Here are some random stats from the trip, which I compute in my head while driving to pass the time:

Total Miles: 2665
Total Driving Hours: 34
Total Driving Hours w/ Gas Stops: 39
Total Travel Hours w/ Sleeping: 84
Average Velocity: 78 Miles Per Hour
Average Velocity w/ Gas Stops: 68 Miles Per Hour
Average Velocity w/ Sleeping: 32 Miles Per Hour
Miles Per Gallon w/ UHaul Trailer: 18.1
Miles Per Gallon w/ out UHaul Trailer: 23.4
Total Times Pulled Over: 0

I sincerely hope that nobody ever has to go on a road trip with me. I don't mess around on these things -- I just want to get done with it. I don't stop unless I'm getting gas or unless it's absolutely necessary. It might be absolutely necessary if, say, something got into the driver's eye (which happened to me in Texas). This of course means no frivolous urinating breaks. On my first day of this trip I had to go to the bathroom on a full tank of gas and waited it out. I also drive at strictly nine miles per hour above the speed limit, thus maximizing my velocity while keeping myself at low risk for being ticketed.

The map of states I've visited now looks like this:

Create Your Own Map

Here are a few lackluster highlights from the trip:

The Delta Glamor Shot

A little over a month ago I posted this picture as part of my "Hey Ryan, What Are You Doing Next Year?" post:

In that post I poked fun at the fact that the above picture was the glamor shot that was included on all of the Teach for America literature relating to the Delta. Well, while I was down there I ended up driving over the bridge in the background:

The "Welcome to Arkansas" sign looks photoshopped but I swear it isn't.

That is a shot I took while driving across the bridge.

Bringing the UVA/VT/W&M Rivalry to North-Central Arizona

As I got off of I-40 and on I-17 I saw a Virginia license plate. On the car were stickers from both Virginia Tech and William & Mary. I ordinarily don't give half a crap about school rivalries, but seeing as I randomly found this car in North-Central Arizona, I had to go for it. They were going pretty slow, as most Virginia drivers tend to do, so I gassed it and cut them off so that they could see my UVA sticker on my back window. I was hoping that they would follow me, flip me off, or something. But they didn't, they just kept moseying along, which didn't surprise me.

The Sun May Rise in the East, At Least it's Settled in a Fine Location

I crossed the California border yesterday just in time to catch a beautiful California sunset.

Damn it feels good to be home for a few weeks before I go start a new endeavor.

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I have mixed feelings about how graduation went. I'll post more about that later, along with pictures. I can't right now because I'm posting this from Cleveland, Mississippi, where I'm putting my stuff in storage for Teach for America.

Anyhow, the day after graduation I had to be out of my room by 12:00 noon. Great. There is no relaxing and moving gradually, just not-so-subtle prodding. I had my stuff packed, so all I had to do was throw it in my U-Haul trailer, which I reserved weeks ago. However, I went to pick up my trailer and was given a flat, "I won't have any more today." My dad then had to leave (who was supposed to help me pack) and I finally found a trailer across town to use and started packing my things. As I started at about 1PM my crypto card stopped working. If they want me out so bad they should probably allow me to take my things, right? So, Ally had to go to the door with me each time I took something out to the trailer so that I could get back in. I finally got out at 4:30PM and ran more errands for the rest of the day and got to bed at midnight. So yeah, yesterday totally sucked. I then woke up at 4:00AM and started driving at 5:10. Here is the route I'm taking:

The blue is my normal route and the green is my route this time around. The spike along the Mississippi River is where I'm going to go drop my stuff. I'm hoping to make it the whole way tomorrow, but I have my doubts. It's only twenty hours of driving, but I have to put all my things in storage at 9AM, which won't help my ability to pull a twenty hour shift. I guess that's what Red Bull is for. We'll see if I can do it.

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I found out about this during the final Mug Night shenanigans at O'Neals. It was part of this guy's final in his History of Espionage class:

Congress' first major step [toward making itself more active in dealing with covert operations] was the Hughes-Ryan Amendment in 1974, which for the first time imposed substantive and procedural restrictions on the conduct of covert operations. The Hughes-Ryan Amendment forbid the expenditure of funds by or on behalf of the CIA for covert operations -- that is, CIA operations in foreign countries "other than activities intended solely for obtaining necessary intelligence" -- unless the President first determined that the "operation is important to the national security of the United States." The Amendment further required the President to report "in a timely fashion, a description and scope of such operation to the appropriate committees of Congress."

(Source)

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I'm finally done with this semester and thus my entire undergraduate education. I was supposed to be done last Friday, and technically I was, but my advisor didn't get back to me about minor thesis revisions. So I put another four hours in yesterday, a few more today where I was fighting with MS Word over formatting, and finally got my end product.

Thesis.pdf

I went and turned it in this evening and caught my final moment as an undergrad on film:

It's really weird being here now. I think there are maybe four people in all of Brown (my residential college) and the rest of the town is dead too. All of the kids have gone home and the graduating fourth years all went to "beach week," a concept still foreign to me as a Californian. Basically, everybody goes to the beach for a week after school is done in high school or college (oftentimes even after college) and the whole east coast does it. How did the entire Atlantic seaboard collectively decide to do that? It's so odd.

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Just like Lindsay, I recently purchased a new digital camera, the same model in fact. I can't really afford it, but I figure that I should have one for graduation and I will be able to afford it in the long run since I have a job. The new camera is replacing my old Sony Mavica. You know, having a digital camera store pictures on a floppy disk sounded like a good idea three years ago, but now it is pretty tedious. My old camera apparently sells for a bit more than $150 on eBay. I'm going to have to list mine to recoup some of my costs.

Anyhow, here's one of the first photos with it. This is Matt Starr last night at BANG, a swanky restaurant / bar right off the Charlottesville Downtown Mall. He asked for a strong martini and he certainly got it. This is him going for his chaser after gulping some of it down. Click to see a hi-resolution version.

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I've been at least somewhat focused on finals lately so I haven't been able to post stuff. Yesterday I finished my final for History of UVA in the 20th Century (yes that actually is a class) and I thought I would share some of what my final paper was on.

Nobody would ever think of UVA as a radical University by any means, in an historic or contemporary context. It used to be all white conservative "gentlemen" and now everybody is just apathetic. However, during the late 1960s and 1970 things got a little crazy.

In the late 60s students here and elsewhere protested the Vietnam War, which was pretty typical. But in early May Nixon ordered troops into Cambodia. This sparked mass protests in the days that followed, one of which was at Kent State in Ohio. At one of the demonstrations there four students were shot and killed by the National Guard. This sparked some universities to call for nationwide shutdowns in protest of the invasion. UVA was urged to follow suit.

(This is a hall under the UVA Rotunda)

The day following the Kent State 'massacre' radical Jerry Rubin and ACLU lawyer William Kunstler spoke to a packed UHall full of students:

This fired up the students, 2,000 of whom then marched to Maury Hall, the building that housed the ROTC program (Army ROTC now uses the building). A mattress was burned and the building was defaced:

After authorities got the crowd to disperse it marched to Carr's Hill, home of then UVA President Edgar Shannon. The crowd taunted the President and his family, shouting, "Strike!" Shannon eventually came out to address the crowd, which eventually left. During these tense times students would report to Lawn Room 50 East, where, not surprisingly, M! Bruce currently lives:

In the two days following the invasion of Maury Hall and the march on Carr's Hill there were more more demonstrations:

At one of the protests during those two days 68 students were arrested, though released due to Shannon's working behind the scenes. Finally, on May 10th Shannon delivered his most famous speech to thousands of students, where he actually sided with them, saying:

"No other enterprise has cruelly reduced the capacity of our nation to improve the quality of life and in many areas to even sustain it, than this war."

The students were thrilled that Shannon came out in support of their side of the issue, though he still denounced violence and the actions preceding May 10th. Shannon nearly lost his job over the ordeal, but it quelled the very real potential for violence to break out.

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I don't remember this movie exactly, as it's been many years since I've seen it, but the basic plot structure goes something like this. Brandon Fraser is a student at Harvard. He somehow meets up with Joe Pesci, a homeless person. Pesci teaches Fraser a bunch of life lessons, one of which makes Fraser miss his thesis deadline by a day and thus makes him ineligible to graduate with honors.

I've found myself in a kind of similar situation, though it doesn't involve a bunch of fluffy like life lessons that I'm learning. It's because the UVA Politics Department sucks.

In order to graduate with any kind of distinction in the Politics Department, you need to be in the Government Honors Program, the Political and Social Thought Program, or the Distinguished Majors Program (DMP). Notice that these are all programs, meaning that you have to apply to be in any of them and all of them are pretty selective, though the first considerably more than the second and the second more so than the third. In any case, there is no way for a student to take his or her own initiative, work hard on a project, and receive some type of distinction.

In my case I wanted to apply for the DMP, which requires the following (among other generic application materials):

A five-page statement explaining your interest in and qualifications for the program. The statement should demonstrate your commitment to the rigorous and in-depth study of politics, domestic or international. It should outline your proposed thesis topic, and justify that topic as one that merits a full year of research, thinking, and writing. Finally, it should provide information on the courses you have completed relevant to that topic.

At the time of the deadline I didn't have a topic so even applying was out of the question. However, a few weeks later I got a great idea. I emailed the program director and he told me no dice but to pursue it as an independent study.

I was really interested in the topic, which at the time was simply exploring whether or not David Canon's Supply-side Theory can be applied to majority Latino congressional districts. To pursue the topic I took courses in which I would do exactly the same things the kids in the DMP were doing. I took Political Analysis to become familiar with political science research, and an independent study each semester this year. The first semester was a review of Latino politics and the second one was actually writing the thesis. This mirrors the DMP pretty damn well.

Anyhow, I did my research and honestly didn't think it came out that well, certainly not as well as someone in the DMP who had guidance and constant feedback. Well, I handed a draft of my thesis in to Lynn Sanders, who was administering my independent study. She flips through the pages some and says, "Well, I can tell just by glancing through it that it is better than at least two of the DMP theses that I've read."

That was quite a burn. I did all of the work that the DMP people did, produced something better than at least two of them (out of twenty) and I don't get any recognition. Professor Sanders explained that people doing research and not getting recognition is a problem that she wants to have changed this summer when the faculty make changes to the curriculum. I would be her test case for making the change. The change probably wouldn't be retroactive, but at least someone in my shoes down the road might get something for his or her efforts.

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