Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Academic agenda

I have assembled a pretty comprehensive to-do list for the next while.

I have assignments to grade for the environmentalism and social media course where I am a teaching assistant, and a coordination meeting with the other TA. Tomorrow, I am doing faculty and PhD student portraits for the department of political science. Saturday we are interviewing potential housemates, there is the U of T Judo annual general meeting, and I am performing a sketch with Trevor at Massey’s ‘Tea Hut’ talent show.

Most importantly, I am working toward a set of targets for completing my PhD proposal on campus fossil fuel divestment. By the 28th I am to submit the literature review and hypotheses. Then, select and justify case studies by March 8th, finish up methods by the 15th, and present the essentially finished proposal to my research design class on the 21st.

On May 5th or 6th I am presenting on Canadian climate change policy at the U of T Ethics Centre Graduate Conference, and I need to have my paper on Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipeline ready for the Canadian Political Science Association conference by May 23rd.

Governing council elections

My friend Amanda Harvey-Sachez, who played a central role in the fossil fuel divestment campaign at U of T, has just been elected to the university’s governing council as one of two representatives for full-time undergraduates.

Unfortunately, the student members are constrained in how they are allowed to participate in the council. Notably, they cannot add items to the agenda.

It’s interesting to see that graduate students from Physical Sciences and Life Sciences seem to vote a lot more than those from Humanities and Social Sciences. The physical and life science representative got 380 votes in a race of five people. The humanities winner got 88 votes in a race between six.

Winter lows

I haven’t been doing especially well in the last little while. To begin with, I don’t feel like I am making adequate progress on the PhD project. Also, my wrist continues to be quite painful — to a degree that impedes returning to Judo. It has been illustrating the degree to which Judo had become an organizing and de-stressing force since September.

It’s not easy to identify every factor contributing to this malaise, but the effects are evident. It’s especially self-defeating in the case of the thesis. Waking up every day full of anxiety about lack of progress doesn’t serve the aim of making progress. I can also sense how I am even more anxious and irritable than usual, partly because of how I see myself responding to minor issues (like my coat rack collapsing, leaving me with far more coats than wardrobe space, and thus a room strewn with random garments).

I know the appropriate response is to focus on self-care, but that can feel self-defeating too — like choosing to relax for a while in the hope that it will make you so much more productive in the near future that you end up ahead.

Winter Ball 2017

On Saturday, my friend Amanda and I attended Massey College’s annual Winter Ball.

The planning committee made a bold choice this year, omitting the sit-down dinner which has been the centrepiece of all other Massey high table dinners which I have attended and serving a variety of appetizers in the common room and using the dining hall as a vast space for waltzing. The change of approach – and absense of long speeches – made the event distinct and memorable.

Judo update

There are some Judo words which I only know how to pronounce phonetically.

Among them is the name of Sensei Isador. I remember it because I know he’s not a window…

My mnemonics for remembering throws and hold-downs are similarly silly. Cramming vocab for my yellow belt grading, I decided that Kata gatame (where you hold uke down with one of their arms pressed against their face and hold them on their back while on your belly or on your knee beside them) was easy to remember because a katana is a sword you wear on your side (a bad choice since “yoko” often means “side” in Judo, as with another low-belt hold-down: Yoko-shiho-gatame). For Kami-shiho-gatame, I thought this on-top belt-grabbing hold-down would be well-suited for removing a camisole.

Tonight I also invented a protocol for dealing with potential rib injuries. Early response with an ice pack seems to help a lot, but it’s impractical for nights when I need to work. By putting on my MEC poofy down vest, putting a belt across my chest at a suitable height, and putting a 2 kg bag of frozen veggies against the ribs in question, it seems I can reduce inflammation without impeding research or typing ability.

I have also been making slow progress with my project to lose 15 pounds.

Changing topics in year 5

My supervisors have been encouraging me to switch thesis topics. I find myself resisting because the proposed alternative topic has very little to do with the intersection between environmental and indigenous politics, which I judge to be the most important ongoing change in the contemporary politics of the United States and Canada.

At the same time, while I have made a significant effort to come to grips with indigenous politics in the context of climate change politics, I have also often felt contradicted and confused, unable to discern confidently which interpretation may be most robust and useful. It may well be that I just don’t know enough about them to make a PhD research project with that focus feasible to complete over the next two years.

If you look at my initial long proposal and my subsequent shorter proposal, you can see a few of the reasons why I think this intersection is so interesting and important.

I’m still thinking it through.

Judo term 2

On Tuesday evening, I am starting the intermediate Judo class with the Hart House Judo Club, which will run every Tuesday and Saturday through the winter term.

I found the beginner class very satisfying and have enjoyed the extra classes for all skill levels between terms. Still, I am nervous about the higher level class. I am a very slow learner at this sort of thing (just try to teach me any kind of dance step!) and I have some bad habits which the instructors regularly remind me of. Also, I am a lot less fit than the average person in even the beginner class, where almost everyone else seems to deal with the warmup push-ups, sit-ups, and other exercises a lot more easily than I do.

That said, my motivations are mostly psychological and it’s undeniable that a Judo class produces a better workout than I would create for myself in a two-hour span. I would be perfectly fine in a scenario where I never (or only extremely slowly) progress beyond the yellow belt, hopefully incrementally shedding bad habits along the way.