2nd Week Academic Slump

I don't want to say that it happens every semester and that all classes are susceptible to this...but it really they are.

The second week slump.

The excitement of the first week is gone, and real class begins. Or if that excitement was never there in the first place then students and faculty alike break into mutual resigned pessimism. Either way, the second week slump makes everyone its victim.

This week's classes were exactly that. Mostly because it was a week of continued introductory material in the form of lectures without a lot of depth and certainly not a great deal of enjoyment. And the little depth that was there was sort of shocking to me because most of my professors here have spent a great deal of time talking about political philosophy that lays the groundwork for the subject at hand. I've been feeling academically inept with my professors throwing around names like Marx, Weber, Althusser, Gramsci, Hegel, Rosseau, and theories and ideas like dialectics, dependency theory, modes of production, etc with a simultanous look like you should have a good idea of what all of these are...bad news bears. I feel a real need for a political philosophy class right now, or better yet last semester. Luckily, I have a better handle on the international relations theories and international law and such...all then at that point hearing about the differences between states and nations gets exhausting after 4 classes covering the same point. Oy.

So anyway, the past three lass periods in my four lecture style classes have all been like that to some degree, and I can't tell whether there is just more of an emphasis on the background philosophies here because i'm abraod, or because three of them are grad courses. Althought, my history professor has spent the past three periods talking about the basis of historiographies in the Middle East...that's 4.5 hours of my life wasted in what could have been a reasonable interesting 30 minutes. But if anything, he did at least assure that I will never consider studying historiography in my future. Check that off the possible career list.

As I was sitting in class i did re-realize that no matter whcih field you go into you end up learning a whole new lingo. For those in development/economics, the WB is not Warner Bros but the World Bank. SAP isn't the stuff syrup is made of, its a structural adjustment program. You've got the UN, the UNDP, the ICJ, the MDG's, WTO, WHO, etc. Terms like GDP, GNP, the HDI are always thrown around and then you've got region specific terms like MENA. Oh good times. Yay for an IR vocabulary.

Well, besides the annoyances it has been interesting to think about some of the themes that we're talking about. In my Middle East Politics and History of MENA in the 20th Century class, we've started at basically the same time talking about the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th Cenutry and the rise of colonialism and the huge impact that had on shaping the states in the Middle East in North Africa. (Crossing over into internationa law too here) It's very interesting to think about how the concept of a central "state" is really a western concept that had virtually no roots before the colonial period in the Middle East. But since the Treaty of Westphalia, the state system has been the "in" fad and has virtually changed how the world was organized. But in the Middle East in North Africa this tradition was formed by the colonizers when they set up territorial states with superifical borders, capitals, and leaders and history in the region hasbeen shaped thus ever since. So there is this huge tension between the state and the people in terms of nationalism, tribes, religion, etc. I think in the west, the idea of a state - governmental organization, bureaucracy, etc - separate from religion and ethnicity seems so basic. But in this part of the world, it's questioned and for really good reasons. Who is to say that the state system is the best way to do things?

It certainly brings up some interesting tensions in international law and in thinking about how middle eastern countries relate with each other and the rest fo the world...