Random school things

I'm a little sad that I have class on Tuesday at 10am. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors are getting together on Tuesday to try and convince the Coastal Commission to give certifications for major revisions to the SB County and Montecito Land Use Codes. Our prof said she will try to find out when they're actually discussing this and see if it's still going at our class time (1pm) and figure out a way to see if we can watch it on-line. That'd be neat. The meeting starts at 9am and I've got class at 10am so if it starts then, that's a bummer. I'm learning quite a bit in class and we've only had 2 classes. It's the most law like class I've had (the prof has a JD) and it's all Coastal Zone law so it's pretty interesting. I've never delved deeply into the Coastal Commission before (kind of an area I was lacking knowledge in) so it's been pretty interesting. She's also teaching us how to brief a case, which is a little tedious since you have to actually think about the cases in a deeper manner. :) I am learning more about the judicial system too. Nothing major, but little things here and there and how rulings can effect quite a few things.

I still find I enjoy reading legal cases, though. I don't enjoy legalese, but I enjoy legal cases. That may be why I like County Board of Supervisor meetings too. It's like a legal case in person. People are arguing why their side is correct and they're like little histories in front of you as people explain about their lives and how something might affect them and the legal arguments within it. It's just interesting. Wouldn't want to do it for a full-time job (I think -- Bethany Taylor running for County Supervisor -- eh), but it's interesting. It's by far my favorite class and the reading is dense, but it's at least on a topic I enjoy and the prof is good.

My environmental institutions class is interesting...I like the prof on a personal level and he's more of a lecturer-seminar type prof, but he does run off into tangents and stories quite easily. It's actually pretty funny because he KNOWS he shouldn't say the story, but he runs through it anyway after a mini-battle with himself. It's slightly annoying, but his stories always end up being interesting/weird/funny in a good way so it's a toss up about whether he should or shouldn't do them from an interest level. The class goes by quickly if anything, which is good since it's at 10am and I'm still half asleep through it. There are only 10 of us in it so we're definitely small and hard to miss. The class, though, is going about issues in a way I never thought of before so it's been a learning experience. I don't particularly like the class still, but at least I'm learning something and something new for that matter.

We're basically going to be researching an environmental problem (one that is anthropogenically caused like air pollution, overfishing, deforestation, etc) and come up with an institution to fix it. You know, that's hard! If it was that easy to take this class and we could solve all our problems, we wouldn't have all these environmental problems anymore. It's particularly interesting because this book we're reading (Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom -- totally dense, but interesting and she won the 2009 Nobel Prize) has these "principles" to create a successful institution for common-pool resources and even she knows that applying all these are not fool proof. This class is like thinking "outside of the box" and, at the same time, thinking within it. Instead of using a central government to fix everything or privatization (both have their issues), can you create another type of institution (in this case, rules, but it can be an agency too. Right now in class we're talking about a set of rules) where the common-pool resource (CPR) is sustained over a long period of time and followed generation after generation? Ostrom lists these general principles that successful communities have followed to sustain the CPR and have everyone follow, but even she knows these principles can't fix everything. And, truthfully, her principles aren't anything mindboggling. They're things like clearly defined boundaries, collective-choice arrangements, graduated sanctions, etc. Individually, not innovative and, I like to think, the principles have been included in a lot of things, but got warped over time. So, anyway, that's basically what we're learning right now. It's complex, but I feel like I'm being taught to look at the issues with CPRs and think up new ways to try and solve them than our already worn out ways that don't seem to work. We'll see how it goes.

Conservation planning is pretty...boring...We're using GIS which has been fun. I haven't used it in 3-4 years so it's been a "Ohhh...I remember doing that!", but it's coming back to me pretty quickly. The only issue is that ArcGIS has a lot of quirks so it's relearning all those weird things again. It's going well, though. I apparently look "very knowledgeable" to my classmates because I've had a few people come up to me ask for help and comment on I look like I know it well. I am thankful for CSUMB's GIS lab, though. I feel like I REALLY learned the program when I took the class. I've talked to others who have been certified and my certification was much more intense than there's since we actually went out into the field with GPS units, plotted, came back, and combined all the different layers into one GIS map and manipulated it. We also covered a lot of things in the basic training too (making models for example). Making models was funny for me because the instructions our lab TA gave us were horrible. He missed random steps or didn't explain things well so a lot of deduction skills were involved to try and understand what he was trying to get us to do. Once I figured out he wanted us to make a model, it all clicked and then, weirdly, my brain suddenly remembered how to make a model. So weird. Weird things like remembering F5 is the refresh button for GIS came back too. It really has been a weird relearning process. It's good for the refresher now, though. I feel less guilty about putting the GIS certification on my resume now since I remember how to use GIS again. :) I'm still on the fence about taking the GIS class next quarter...I may or may not take it. I don't NEED it, but it might just be fun to take. I might talk to the prof and ask if I can drop in every once in a while. Anyway, conservation planning is boring and I doubt I'll learn much, but I am enjoying relearning GIS.

Group Project is...going. We're all feeling better about the project, but it's also a high stress level still. It's like we're almost there, but not quite there. So we're fine-tuning now, trying to do some last ditch research efforts, and writing drafts as they become complete. So..it's getting there. Deadlines this quarter are a little intense (our final paper is due March 18th in hard copy with our signatures), but it's moving. It's been a lot of "breathe...breathe...breathe" moments. We had a 2 hour meeting this last Wednesday and I have a feeling it's going to be 2 hour meetings for the rest of the quarter...We need the time, though.

Oh, random thing, I got a free cookbook out of Amazon.com! I got a misship book (Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners) and I contacted them saying they misshipped the book. They replied saying to give them this set of letters and numbers on the bottom barcode so they can track the order and give me a new shipping label so I can mail it out. Well...weirdly...3/4 of the shipping label was missing. Somehow everything BUT my address and the Ontrac shipping number got ripped off. I told them I had the packing slip, but apparently that's not enough for them to track the order or too difficult or something because I got an e-mail reply back saying to just keep the book, free of charge, and that they "hope you'll consider this an isolated incident and give us another chance in the future." So weird, but...Hey! Free book! It retails at $35 and the person paid $23. I'll take it! It has some good recipes in it too. :P

In other news...Saw Easy A. I rather liked the movie. It's a more adult version of Mean Girls (language is more adultish and the topic too), but the acting was good and it was an interesting storyline. Instead of spreading rumors about others, though, it was more of a letting-a-rumor-take-over-your-life-and-how-it-destroys-it kind of thing. If you didn't know what the title meant...It's a reference to the Scarlett Letter and how getting her "A" (for adultery) was, well, easy. I liked it. It's not as funny as Mean Girls because Mean Girls has some truth in it about how girls in high school treat each other. This one was less satirical, I suppose. It also made fun of this Christian group too (which, they way they were portrayed, was...yeah...They were signing songs and holding hands underneath the gazebo at school and their big thing is they wanted to get rid of the the girl with the "A" (the main character actually starts wearing an "A" on her clothes -- again, Scarlett Letter plays a big role in this movie and its script)). So...yeah. I'd give it a B.

With that...today is my relax day before I hit the books tomorrow. I've got to come up with an environmental problem to write about for my issue brief for my environmental institutions class on Tuesday...No clue what to write. What I do want to write about isn't really the type of environmental problem I can solve with an institution (though it does stem from an anthropogenic issue) so I need to come up with something else to write about.