I am displeased.

This time last week I was working (slowly, painfully) on my thesis, thinking first and foremost about what I needed to cover in today's lecture to wrap up the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This morning my department head (who is also my Graduate assistant supervisor) sat in on my class for annual evaluations.  She didn't have a single bad thing to say, not even constructive criticism.  This is quite an improvement over last year, and I'm proud of that.  It was probably the best class session I'd had all year, which is a great deal of luck, since normally these things work out the other way around.

I was discussing the presence of fairly high-tech rockets in the hands of Hezbollah and how, even following the Israeli-Lebanon war in 2006 in which munitions bunkers were taken out en masse, Hezbollah not only increased the frequency of rocket attacks in Israel (to 150 rockets/day at one point) but they were using increasingly sophisticated long-range equipment.  Where do these weapons come from?  Lots of places.  Old Soviet weapons held over from the 80s, old US stingers gifted to the Taliban to help fight off the USSR, and plenty of support from Saudi Arabia and Syria.

One student mentioned that, since this was going on in 2006, that there was also the internet.  i wasn't sure what to think of that, exactly, and my response was this:

"I don't think that you can just order rockets online."  There were a few moments silence before, from the back of the room a girl announced "That's now my Facebook status."

I'm having an effect on the world now.  Influencing someone's Facebook status is more change than most teachers can hope for in a given lecture, so I'm happy about it.

It took a few minutes to get class going properly again after that.  Turns out by "there's the internet" he meant that plans for the construction of weapons were widely available online at this point.  He was right, one could theoretically make a rocket from old soviet scrap with the right knowledge, but these were professional, polished, high-quality weapons and not salvaged ones.



Then, I went to the graduate school, where my thesis proposal had been drifting through the twisting nether since May, and was starting to really tax my sanity.  It turns out that it was approved and filed five months ago and they had somehow managed not to notify me or my thesis adviser (who is also my Graduate Assistant supervisor, who is also my department head).  So there was never really a problem to begin with, and I could have ignored this and things would have worked themselves out magically when graduation rolled around.

Next step, email the dean about that class I took from him last year and see if I could get him to write me some reference letters.  Score.  I shot out other, significantly less awkward emails to two other professors (one of whom is also my thesis adviser, who is also my graduate assistant supervisor, who is also my department head).  Agreement all around, the application process is underway.


I'm displeased because last week i was comfortable (if not necessarily happy) in my daily routine, and now I'm making real plans to attend a PhD program that will involve a cross-country move and huge changes to my life.  This has gotten way too real, way too fast.  This is the part where I panic.

DON'T PANIC