Two Terms Down!

Hilary Term ends on Saturday. I still have one more seminar, but I have completed all of my essays and this particular course does not require much preparation...so I'm done! This term was certainly busier than Michaelmas, but at only eight weeks, it goes by quickly. In fact, the whole year is going by quickly. It's hard to believe that I'm almost two-thirds done with my degree!

I think in an earlier post I mentioned some of the essays I have been writing. For International Diplomacy, I wrote one on Cialdini's persuasion principles and another on how to overcome barriers to negotiation. Cialdini's work is only a portion of the much broader literature on the psychology of influencing behavior, but his popularity in the business world draws extra attention to his contributions. In my essay, I summarized the principles and then critiqued his claim of their universality. Many researchers propose principles that include only some of his principles (or none of them), so it is a valid question. However, I believe that his points are generally applicable to a wide population and if anything, might be just a subset of universally applicable persuasion techniques. For overcoming barriers to negotiation, I discussed ways to reduce risk, expand the range of solutions under consideration, build on common ground, among other approaches. This topic is particularly interesting in light of the debate on the American health care system and President Obama's recent summit to help move it forward. I wrote another essay for my Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Politics course looking at how NGOs should choose and frame transnational movements. Several authors discuss how certain frames (how a problem is described to the general population) have greater resonance with the population. Universal resonance, as well as resonance with the local population, are critical for the movement to grow and make a lasting difference.

Outside of the classroom, the end of Hilary brought an end to the rugby and rowing seasons as well. Here is a picture from our rugby dinner just before our semi-finals match. As a result of some unfortunate scheduling, I had to bike straight from a race to the match. I made it in time, but...um...we won't talk about the results of that match.

Realizing that I have not posted too many pictures from rowing, I snapped a few of the boathouse to ease some of the pressure on your imagination. We share the boathouse with a few other colleges, but it is a large building and easily accommodates all the crews. I haven't been able to take any at rugby, because it's usually rainy and I'm always on the pitch (aka field).

The balcony has one of the best views of the river of all the colleges because it is in the center of the course, just past a narrow bend called the "gut." Why this is exciting, I will explain in a little later on. The Men's 2nd Eight boat (the one I usually row in) is the top one on the right. The red tape is a point of pride, also soon to be explained. Do you like how I'm building suspense?

Rowing concluded with a big--nay, huge--regatta (~1,200 rowers and coxes from Oxford!!) called Torpids. Torpids, and Summer Eights during Trinity term, are a unique style of racing found only in Oxford (as far as I know) called bumps. The teams are slotted into divisions of 12 based on their performance at last year's Torpids. Each crew starts about a length and a half apart with the goal to "bump" the boat in front of them, either through concession (read, "surrendering") or an actual collision (read, "the ideal outcome, never mind the $30,000 price tag on the boats"). The gut then, is especially exciting because boats either slow down to navigate the turn and risk getting bumped or attempt to power through, risking crashing into the bank. Either way, we have a great vantage point from our balcony. One amusing part of this is that since the race is only four days, a crew can only advance four places in the standing each year. This difficult feat is called "blades" meaning that you bumped the crew in front of you each day. However, if you are at the top of your division and crash, you can be passed by all eleven boats behind you and drop into the next division--a four year hole to dig out of!

The picture above is our Men's 1st Eight shortly before they bumped the crew in front of them. They were one of only a handful of boats to bump everyday and achieved the highly coveted blades. My crew was not as successful, but we still had a good showing. After the races in the lower divisions was cancelled the first day, we rowed over the second day meaning that we failed to bump the boat in front of us, but also avoided being bumped by the boat behind us. The second day, we bumped just before entering the gut, narrowly avoiding being bumped by Balliol behind us. In our attempt to exit the race (the reward for bumping) by clearing the racing line, we managed to get caught in low-hanging tree branches, nearly catch the oars of two crews behind us, and get spun around in the current. We were too happy to care. As you might expect, on the final day of racing we were bumped by the crew that had almost caught us the day before. Thus, our overall standing was the same we had started in. 

Here is a picture of my crew after our last race on Saturday. All but one of the guys are novice rowers, so we were happy with our results.

On a final note, I just wanted to give a shout out to all of my buddies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of my classmates recently completed their officer training and have started deploying. They are joining a number of officers serving in the area that I know from previous years at West Point. While I am over here working on my degree and enjoying my time in England, I never lose sight of the bigger picture. Everyday,  I think about our men and women in service and pray for their safety and well-being. I hope you do the same!