My roomate moved out yesterday, so I have the apartment to myself again, which is nice. We didn't really talk so the companionship really won't be missed. A good representation of our relationship is a story about when he first moved in. I had introduced myself to him when he first moved in, but after that we really didn't say much to each other.

Then a couple of weeks into the semester I had gotten a note from the postal service on the door saying that they tried to deliver a package and it had my first initial and last name on it. I came inside and my roommate was there. He asked me if I had seen the package slip. I said I had. He then asked me what my name was. I assumed he was looking for me to say how to pronounce my my last name because that is what was writen on the package slip and it is an oddly spelled polish name complete with the "cz" combination. So I replied, "It's (last name)" He said, "Your name is (last name)? People call you (last name)?" I said, "No, my name is Jesse (last name). People call me Jesse." He responded, "Oh, okay, I don't know if we ever introduced ourselves."

Who lives with someone for two weeks and has no idea what their roommate's name is? His name is Anthony and yes, I did know it when he asked me what my name is. So, he is gone and I have no contact information for him so I hope he wasn't planning on getting anything important. I also hope that I won't ever have to list all the people I have lived with and their contact information cause I would have no idea how to get in touch with him.

Well, that is all. Hope everyone has a good memorial day.

I am back at Maxwell and have just completed a full week of school. This semester will be good in that I am taking three classes that I am actually interested in, State and Local Finance, Metropolitan Politics, and Urban Policy, and I don't have a single test. The bad part about this semester is that I am taking five courses and as none of them have tests, it means I get the pleasure of writing papers. Getting back into writing papers will be annoying as I didn't write anything over 4 pages all last semester (the joy of being in an MPA program is that they are preparing you for a job, so you just write lots of memos instead of long papers). Also, last semester I only had 4 courses, now I have 5, but I don't have an internship anymore.

As I do at the beginning of ever ysemester, I have to start getting organized, and this time I am trying to do it right off the bat rather than later because with the writing I will have to do, I won't have time to jerk off for the first few weeks (in previous semesters, I had done jack shit for the first month or so as evidenced by the fact that my last two internships started more than a month into the semester). I am trying to firm up a good routine, especially with my sleep cycle. Part of this routine will try and include a nightly posting of 15mins on (e:strip) to better keep track of my life. This semester, two days I have 8:00 classes and two days I have 12:45 classes. Hopefully I will wake up at the same time each day and exercise or something else that is good for myself. I am not there yet but I should be soon. OK, my 15 mins is almost up. I'll see you tomorrow.

P.S. My hair is all now gone courtesy of (e:maureen)'s beauty salon and I now have a beard courtesy of my mother's genes. I'll post the pics (e:maureen) took soon.

Last night my friends here threw me a birthday party. It was really nice. I was kind of a surprise in that it was originally going to be an 80s teen movie night (it still was an 80s teen movie night too). So I didn't know until my friend picked me up and asked me to hold my birthday cake. I am really glad I came here. Though I cannot go on the racist tyrades I could at AU, I am feeling more comfortable with and really like the people here, even if some of them drive me up the wall sometimes. (thanks for talking me out of that one (e:maureen)).

At the party we watched Pretty in Pink and part of another movie (Say Anything?). This was the first time I have watch Pretty in Pink and I was pissed. I really related to duckie in the movie and felt he got fucked. He was the only one with real balls. Fuck the pretty boy. Plus the pretty boy broke the number 1 rule of friendship - bros over hos. I am very bitter in how the nerd gets screwed in these 80s teen movies. Like at the end of Breakfast Club when they all pair up except Anthony Michael Hall who has to write the paper. That's fucking BS. Fuck you John Hughes. At least we have revenge of the Nerds.

Hello All,
Thank god its the weekend and thank god for veterans day 11-11. I was so ready to get done with this week. I had two midterms. The stats midterm I took today was really rough. After working on it for a while, I opted to not be graded on it and have its points be shifted onto the final. I really need to pay more attention in the class. I just kept getting confused over what formulas are used for what. Oh well, it is done.

I just wanted to add some more pic from Halloween. On the first set of pics, my friend Jess commented that I reminded her of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the lambs. Unfortunately, I never saw the movie though I have read the book and seen both the sequel and prequel (Remember seeing Red Dragon (e:Maureen)) and I couldn't find an image of him on the internet, so I guess I will just have to rent it to see. Here are the pics:







-Jesse

The Public Administration, International Relations, and Law School departments/schools at Syracuse had a halloween party at a club. It was a lot of fun. I don't have a camera so I stole these pics from others. I am also a narcissist so they are all of me.

Note on the outfit, the jacket was mine, but I had to buy the skirt and tank top. It is very awkward going into dressing rooms to try women's clothes on. Especially at old navy, when they insist on taking the clothes from you and hanging them up in your changing room. They also kept walking by when I was in there asking if I need another size. Good customer service.

-Jesse

Getting ready for the ball. Look at those legs.


Looking hot even though the frame went with someone else's costume. The person next to me is in my program and an alderman in Ithaca



Still looking hot


The belles of the ball


Partying


Partying (or rape)

I am done with my final for Public Administration and Democracy. I just have a paper to go. I will give more details about the class later. In the meantime, enjoy my official bio at Maxwell. You can also see who else I am in my program with.
-Jesse

It has been a pretty good weekend as I have been able to catch up on a lot of things I have been slacking off on since my class started, like doing dishes, picking up laundry, doing my reading for class etc. It is nice to feel somewhat caught up, but a feeling of dread comes over me as I realize that I still have one more week of the evilness that is this class. I will first give you a little overview of what has happened. Last weekend, I had to work on the Democrats response to the State of the Union (this is the speech given by the opposition party each year after the president gives the state of the union. here is a link to last years ) It was going to be annoying to do it because the person who usually gives it for the house democrats was going to be out of town for the weekend. That was no big deal though because I didn't mind working on it cause developing political message/themes etc is all I learned about in undergrad. So we were supposed to meet on friday with the senate dems. They never showed. One of them sent an email saying he really didn't work on saturday so he could take a break from a pretty intense week of class, so another House dem and myself worked out a message and themes based on the issues we were going to be addressing. I thought it was pretty good (but I was the one who did it). I emailed it out and got a response from the Senate dems saying that the person who would be delivering it wouldn't be back until 6 on sunday and that the message would be "Where's the leadership?" with themes being different issues that the President has not shown leadership on. This was an awful message for several reasons. First, after a State of the Union, the president is seen as being a strong leader who has just laid out a series of initiatives, to respond to this strong leader image with a "Where's the leadership?" message would ring pretty hollow.Second, you want your message to be one that is about yourself that instantly draws contrast between your opponent. "where's the leadership?" is not about the dems at all, plus the person delivering the message for the senate dems was not going to be their leader, making the where's the leadership message ven more ridiculous cause our ledership is not the one questioning it. Third, issues are not themes. Themes say something about the message specific to a certain catergory. Ugh. I know I sound really poli-sci snobby here but I can't help it. This is what I did for four years and when people who don't even bother to show up to help and work on the speech challenge this, I get VERY annoyed.

Anyway, I will skip the rest of the annoyingness and say that we eventually met with them sunday night and my message and themes prevailed. On Sunday night, we also discovered that the person for the House dems that was supposed to deliver half of our response was not going to be back in Syracuse in time to deliver the speech. I volunteered to do it cause I am an egotistical glory-hog, plus I took multiple public-speaking courses. As far as delivery, the speech went pretty well. First, during the president's speech, we got the dems to clap when they weren't supposed to. After the line, "Parts of the Patriot Act are set to expire" It was very funny especially cause the dems in real life clapped at that same point on the real state of the union address. We then delivered ours and the Republicans were pretty rude about it booing and yawning loudly. But I got them back, while I was talking about preserving Social Security, one of the Republicans yawned loudly, I was able to react to it and say, "we need to protect social security so our seniors can enjoy the benefits they are entitled to <yawn> like that elderly man back there." I was thrilled that I was able to come up with that off hand. It really helped make the speech and a bunch of people later told me how much they liked the speech.

The rest of the week was also stressful. I set up a series of press conferences the Democrats message an created a template press release so everyone could write a press release on their issue. They went pretty well, but it is annoying trying to edit press releases that explain a person's position that you are unsure of. They did end up going pretty well and I was impressed with how my group handled themselves once they actually were talking about the issues. One of the highlights was when my press release was cut and pasted into the first five paragraphs in the lead story of the paper.

On thursday, we had hearings, they went ok. The first two panels we couldn't really get the best of, but we rocked the third. It was mainly because of my real-life hatred of boeing and my wanting to show what a bad organization they are. We were also told that we were by far the better prepared of the House Dems committee.

This weekend has been nice. We got friday of as our spring break. I cleaned my apartment caught up on my reading etc. Friday night, I went to the b-day party of someone in the program. It was nice, pretty laid back, but AWFUL music. (who plays Nirvana's unplugged version of Come as You Are at a party).

Saturday I caught up on more reading cleaned up a bit more and played in the weekly game of ultimate frisbee. I also talked to a bunch of people I haven't spoken to in a while. I talked to my friend Jennie who is getting married in 2 weeks. Unfortunately I won't be able to make the wedding, but it was nice to talk to her.

Also, for all of you who are wondering, the part in the Gorillaz song "Feel Good INC" where it goes "Windmill, Windmill . . ." the music is a rip off of U2's Staring at the Sun. I don't know about you, but it was killing (e:Maureen) and myself.

This week we actually vote on the bills we wrote for this simulation. Apparently, this has a tendency to take forever. I am dreading it cause I don't know if we are going to be prepared or get our bills through. Eh, we will just have to cause as much trouble as we can.

I guess that is all for now. I am sorry if this was incredibly boring for you and you now know how much of a poli-sci snob/nerd I am. Whatever, it is your own fault for reading my journal. Take care.
-Jesse

God, this course sucks. I am so ready for the weekend. It is too much pressure and politics I feel like I am constantly playing catch up. At least today I registered for my courses so it gives me hope that this will soon end. And after today I will be able to collect my thoughts and get organized on the weekend.
-Jesse

So I guess I have already broken my "I'll post once a day promise." I'll try to get back on track but I am now on a different schedule with my new class so I will have to work that out. My new class is basically one big simulation with all 130 of us playing different roles in government - whenther members of congress, the cabinet, interest groups or the media. I am the ranking member on intelligence. http:/www.house.gov/harman/ It can be interesting, but too many of the people in this school are over achievers so in order to keep up with them I actually have to try. This makes it kind of difficult and I stress out a bit. What also compounds the situation is that the House of Representative, which I am a part of, is one of the least desired positions meaning that I have a ton of people who didn't care about where they were put because they are not that big into American politics. On my committee, I am the only native born American and there is only one other american citizen on a committee of 7. This presents a problem in that I really have to push the issue. Plus, I think I am one of the few American political science students in our group so I have to explain the process to them as well. This is good in that I can offer assistance an hopefully they can trust and help me, but bad in that it means I have to do a lot of work. I almost can't wait until I have normal classes. It will be so much less stressful. Oh well, in the mean time I have to get back to politicking.

As far as my exam last friday. I think it went pretty well. Thanks to (e:leetee) and (e:maureen) for the well wishes. My weekend with Elena was nice. Go see Wedding Crashers, it is hilarious. I especially love Vince Vaughn in the movie. His character is great. Ok, off to class. Take care.

-Jesse

My first exam in grad school is about to begin. I am really nervous. I have a study sheet and I went over a lot of the stuff that will be on the exam, but I really should have taken practice problems and exams to prepare me for the pressure. I have to go and stop studying and just relax. Otherwise I will be too nervous to do anything. My biggest fear is that I get into the exam get nervous and seize up and can't think through the problems clearly. Cause most of the problems can be done if you just think through them. It is a lot of common sense. But if I start to get too nervous, I might start to confuse myself rather than just think through the problems. Wish me luck.
-Jesse