We didn't exactly kick ass at the prelim, but looking at it a year later we didn't exactly get our asses kicked either... (even though it seemed like it at the time). Since last January both S and I passed our oral exams and have been trying to finish our incompletes (we have three each), write our prospectuses and stay sane.

-R

Only 5 days left...

I spent too many days on a hopeless proposal for a fellowship I know I will no get. Living in the denial is the ultimate self-handicapping strategy, and I am a master at it.

I did learn though, that when S and I study together we have a better chance for reaching a global maximum of knowledge--as opposed to being stuck at a local minimum. Scott Page has mathematically proven that if you want a group of the ten best lawyers, or the ten best doctors, etc., you need to bring people in who are not ranking as high on your selection scores but are diverse. They bring a different problem-solving perspective and so kick the group out of the local maximum.

Also, Marxism is no longer part of the PE mainstream because when formal modelers deconstructed it to its smallest elements, the pieces did not add up together.

Unfortunately, I cannot use any of those two pieces of information on the prelim... in 5 days!

-R

STILL in the dark waters of realism

R is not kicking ass. She is getting her ass kicked... by the very pessimistic realist tradition. Hopefully liberalism will give me a more optimistic outlook on my (now official) major field.

On a happier note, I am finally getting the hang of writing useful summaries thanks to S's insistence on us using tables to set a common format. So, I first write out my notes in my usual long unstructured form, and then box them into the four categories of the table. Not the most efficient process.

-R

on a lovely sunday night when we shared yet another grapefruit...

we also made the plan. the plan consists of the six weeks we have to acquire the intellectual capacity to kick-ass (not sure what exactly this means anymore, but still that's the objective...) we gave a week for every major school in IR, we marked our calendars, also added the papers that we need to write during those six weeks, as well as the classes/subjects we need to review, and the fellowship applications we'd like to make... decided what we're gonna read for the first week to be able to navigate in the dark waters of realist anarchy. and... boy, it looks scary!

so, according to the plan, this is the week of realism.
the memorable sentence of the day, of course comes from morgenthau: "politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature."
also, we have a beautiful table showing the different operationalizations of 'power' in variants of realism.
not much fun yet.. we're just waiting for the days when 'fear and insecurity will vary' and the cyclical history will repeat itself once more...

the day when it snowed like there is no tomorrow

when it snows so much, and the real world outside looks like a winter/wonderland it is kinda hard to work. besides, I'm still living in the vampire-like sleeping schedule, which leaves a very little time to do work if I decide to socialize during the time normal people live. So, the day when it snowed like there was no tomorrow wasn't a very productive day, but it was a fun day spent with a dear friend and two bottles of wine, (well, there were some bottles of beer, too, but i couldn't count all of them)
the highlight of the night was when i uttered the sentence: "don't you call me ever again a bourgeois" which entertained my friend so much, i don't know why :)
right now i'm trying to decide which one is worse: alcoholism or insomnia? I probably should stop treating alcohol as if it was sleeping pills.
s.

Day 1

S started with the 3-hour a day regimen. R is still only listening (and celebrating the end of an identity crisis). We have a table of theories of foreign policy, 12 downloaded articles, 4 interlibrary-loan requested articles, and call numbers for books S is assigned to read.

What we learned today: Anarchy in Neo/Classical Realism is murky and difficult to read.

Day 0

How we decided to kick ass...

We've had a number of days when we decided to kick ass, but we didn't (or couldn't). We ended up being ass-kicked. So, now we have a blog to write about it.

The last time we decided to kick-ass was yesterday, when our sharp insights and excellent breadth of the IR paradigms (even beyond the mainstream, for one of us) were rewarded with grades that clearly displayed a misperception of the distribution of our capabilities by the instructor. So instead of trying to balance power, we decided to be offensive realists, (which is all about change according to one of us who also managed to go beyond the mainstream), and to challenge the status-quo powers.
So, we're gonna kick-ass, again. this time for real. and write about it here (because we're lame, but ready to make fun of it)