Grammar is a Dominatrix and Other Things Learned in Monasteries

El Escorial de San Lorenzo is about 50 minutes by bus from Madrid and is well worth the trip.  It is a monastery that is remarkably focused on stuff not related to monasteries.  Which kind of makes sense, since the building was also a royal palace and a university.  The palace rooms are now devoted to Goyas and El Grecos and some reproductions of paintings that are now in El Prado.  Also flemish tapestries.  I'm pretty sure that the spanish monarchy had a monopoly on flemish tapestries at one point.  El Escorial also happens to be the last resting place of the spanish monarchy.  And they're slightly obvious about it.  Their crypt is incredibly creepy.

The audio guide doesn't help much.  Let's suffice it to say that there is needless bell tolling.

On a more religious note, which is probably more apropos considering that this is a monastery.  The cathedral is gorgeous.

It is the official royal basilica for the spanish monarchy and it is awesome.  It's an absolutely massive space that kind of sneaks up on you as a result of the organization of the grounds.  Which is a fact remarkable in and of itself.

Finally, the tourist comes upon the library.  On the celling are painted the nine virtues of humanism: grammar, rhetoric, artithmetic, geometry, astronomy, literature, philosophy, psychology, and history.  Grammar is my favorite.  She's the one with the whip...
In addition to a dominatrix-y grammar, the library is super awesome and home to texts that are up to 500 years old.  That's back when people hated writing, so it's very cool that stuff has survived.

We got back to Madrid with enough time to hit a museum, so we went to El Museo De Trajes or the Costume/Clothing museum.  It's a gem.  It's a shrine to spanish clothing and it is incredibly interesting.  It's all in spanish, but it's a very visual museum so that's not too much of a problem.  Definitely worth the visit.

Washington Irving is my Boy

Apparently Washington Irving wrote a book called Tales of the Alhambra, or something like that.  This was news to me, but luckily he got to tell me himself about his time there.  The audio guide people at the Alhambra have apparently resurrected him and forced him to read their script for tourists.  It is more than a little bit creepy.

But the Alhambra is gorgeous.  You absolutely must buy a timed entry since they only allow 300 people in per day and it's so worth it.  I got in during the 9 AM slot and stayed until 2:30.  The grounds are incredibly expansive.  The Alhambra is a Moorish palace in Granada, Spain and is incredibly well kept.  The gardens are beautiful, the site is trash free (somehow) and the building still looks like it's in very good condition for having survived from the moorish period. Personally, after giving up on Washington Irving, I had a lot of fun following groups of school children and listening to their teachers and tour guides.  It was a great way to exercise my spanish and I actually made some friends.  They're third graders from Granada, but they were incredibly polite.  Also super cool about the Alhambra are the hotels actually located on the grounds.  I discovered an adorable place called Hotel America to grab a sandwich and something sweet and I found it awesome.  The food was good and the place was super cute.

All in all, my crazy day in Granada (I flew in and flew out the same day) was a lot of fun.  I'll try to throw up some pictures as soon as I can make my camera work...

Bienvenidos al Madrid

My family seems to hit the ground running when we travel.  Because of all the college touring, we only have a week of my spring break left; so we're essentially doing a city tour.  Midday Sunday we touched down in Madrid, dropped off our bags, and went to El Rastro and La Latina.  El Rastro was not wholely memorable, but La Latina was actually very cool. We found a super cool little place for lunch and a delicious ice cream/bar/coffee place.  We also walked through La Plaza Mayor which is sort of a must see for Madrid, but not entirely special.  It is painted a very democratic shade of burgundy (literally, the city of Madrid put the color of the plaza up to vote and the people of the city chose burgundy) and chock full of street performers.  There, we also picked up the 5-day MadridCard.  For 120 euros, you can get into essentially all of the major sites and a bunch of random minor ones for free for (in our case) five days from the moment you activate it.  Also, you don't have to wait on line.  It is so worth it.

We found out just how worth it on Monday morning when we went to El Palacio Real.  I'm sure it sucks if you don't have the Card, but - when you do - it's hilarious to see how long the line gets.  The Royal Palace in Madrid is probably one of the most worthwhile palace tours, even though the audio guide is a little less than informative.  It does a great job of describing the symbolism and history of the celling frescoes and clocks (the spanish monarchy really likes clocks) but not such a great job of telling you where to look.  It's still pretty interesting though.  It's also a working palace; Juan Carlos I does live there on occasion and the Spanish military still parades through the main courtyard when military celebration is required. For awesome views of said courtyard, head across the street to La Catedral de la Santa María la Real de la Almudena and up to the dome.  It's between 2-4 euros per person (or free with the MadridCard) and there's a museum of Catholic-y stuff along the way which really helps when you're climbing stairs.  The view from the top is pretty worth the stairs as are the incredibly well armed statues of saints (Saint Timothy, for example has a massive saw).  We also hopped a subway to El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.  We essentially only got to see the second floor because we had to catch a flight to Granada, but that second floor was totally worth it.  The second floor is the Cubism/Surrealism floor and also home to La Guernica, which is super cool to see in person.  It's like 30 ft long and has it's own room.  We plan to head back to see floors 1, 3, and 4 because we're a big fan of art museums and because it's free.

As far as plans go for the rest of the week, we basically have none.  Tuesday will be Granada, but other than that we'll be hitting the Top 10 according to the Top 10: Madrid and whatever's free.)

General Thoughts from the Plane Ride Home

I have now seen seven colleges/universities across three states in five days.  I’m a little breathless, but I think I’ve learned a lot from this trip.  I am now definitely less afraid to ask questions on the tours, which I think is better for everyone involved in the walking tour process.  I’ve figured out that saying you’re interested in Physics and Religious Studies is a long way of saying you have no idea what you want to do with yourself.  I know that the three programs I want to see represented are stage tech (specifically lighting design), fencing, and some kind of residential social life.   I need a campus with an active social scene localized on campus.  I want undergraduate research opportunities.  I didn’t know I wanted that before.  I want opportunities like on campus radio (mostly because I think I’ve always had a latent interest in journalism).  I do not want to study all the time.  I would like to have fun. 

So I think the long and the short of this is that I have learned a lot about the fact that I have no idea what I want. 

Sorry for wasting your time with that, but I really do think this trip was useful on the whole.

Maroon and Nuclear Chain Reactions

The final school on the agenda for my college odyssey was the University of Chicago.  As the last school, it was either in the best slot or the worst depending on whether I was exhausted and it would need to make a great impression to overcome that or I was more likely to retain my impression of it because it was the last one I saw.  I’m still not sure which was the case, all I know is that, like W&L, I want to go to the University of Chicago.

This school does not need to tout its academic reputation.  It has produced more Nobel Laureates than any other school in the country.  The Manhattan Project happened under its football stadium (that’s not a joke, there’s a plaque commemorating the site of the first sustained nuclear chain reaction where the football field used to be).  In the words of the tour guide, the professors are “wicked smart”.  However, the school does have the unfortunate reputation of being the place where fun goes to die.  Our guide is acutely aware of that: it was his house that coined the phrase.  In an ironic twist proceeds from selling SWAG emblazoned with that slogan go toward fun trips into Chicago to see stuff like Second City or theater for his house.  And he is quick to assure us that the university is working to change that impression (of course so is all the admissions literature I get in the mail from them). Of the many student run organizations, University Theater is the most popular and with all the SRO opportunities there is always plenty to do on campus.  Hell, Greek Life is even on the rise.  The University of Chicago has by far the lowest percentage of students involved in Greek Life (10-15%) but that number is steadily increasing.  And they have athletics!  They’re Division III, but they do very well.  Their Women’s Basketball team went undefeated in their regular season and lost for the first time in the Sweet Sixteen of the Division Championships.  The school also has an impressive athletic history.  Their women’s basketball team was the first to fly to an away game.  The first Heisman trophy winner was a student at the University of Chicago.  Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg was their coach for forever.  They did do away with their football program in the ‘50s, but they brought it back and they’re doing fine.  And they just built a gorgeous athletic complex.  Not that I’m much of an athlete.  I’ll probably do club fencing if anything.  But it’s still nice to see a school spending money on improving its image. 

My one area of reservation is with regard to the percentage of classes taught by professors.  At most of the schools I’ve looked at, the percentage has been in the high 90s with some schools being at 100% simply by virtue of not having graduate students around to be TAs.  At the University of Chicago that percentage was in the 80s.  Now that’s not terrible, but it’s also not great.  On the plus side, the University of Chicago mostly doesn’t have TAs. They have ABDs.  An ABD is a graduate student who has completed “All But their Dissertation”, so they do know what they’re talking about.  It’s not like you’ll see a first or second year graduate student who is less informed about their topic.  But I still have my reservations.

All in all, I think the University of Chicago is a really good fit for me.  Also, I am a huge fan of the fact that I now own a t-shirt listing all of their Nobel Laureates on the back.  

On the Waterfront

Today marked my first day in Chicago, the beginning of the end of my college visit odyssey.  The penultimate school on my list, Northwestern, was today's goal and I'm not entirely sure what to say about it.

Purely objectively, it has pretty much everything I want from a school.  Good fencing, good religious studies, good physics, good theatrical design, an active social scene centered on campus.  It's maybe a little bigger than I would like (one of the guides told a story about a girl who helped him out in a computer programing class that he hasn't seen since), but not so big that it becomes depersonalized.  Hell, a very good friend of mine is going there; the kind of friend that you would trust to recommend stuff to you.  But I can tell you that it probably isn't for me.  I was not viscerally repulsed by it within 10 minutes the way I was with UVA, but I can tell it's not right.  But I could not possibly tell you why.  The campus has great traditions and history, but none of them did anything for me.  Logically speaking, I probably could be happy there; but I cannot imagine myself on this campus.

But setting aside my disappointment with/ambivalence toward Northwestern, I had a really cool day in Chicago. I've connected through O'Hare many times, but I've never properly seen the city before today.  My dad drove me around and pointed out important land marks that he remembers from when he lived here and we got to go to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI).  Incidentally on the same day that the Mythbusters were there.  An exhibit about their science opened up today, and I got to see the ribbon cutting.  Admittedly I could only see the shower of sparks created by the event, not the source of those sparks, but it was still pretty cool to be 50 feet away from Adam and Jamie.  Mythbusters was a huge part of my childhood, and I'm still a fan.  I think the best part of that whole experience was the fact that it was completely unplanned.  I found out about the whole thing as my dad and I were parking via Twitter (I follow Adam: @donttrythis).  I love Twitter.  MSI also has a German U-Boat, which was super cool.  The special exhibits I sought out were one on the future of manned space travel and one on the inner workings of the Internet.  Networld was somewhat underwhelming, but the Space Exhibit was super cool.  I kind of love space, so it was really interesting to see models of real things juxtaposed with clips from sci-fi imaginings of space travel dating back to the nineteen oughts.  I also happened to wander into an exhibit on inventors where I saw a car with a drag of 2.11.  For perspective, a 10-speed bike has a drag of 3.something. To sum up: I love twitter, space, and inventing stuff.

That's it. Later today I'll be heading out for some real Chicago pizza and tomorrow I'll be seeing the University of Chicago.  Get pumped for continued blogging!

Why I Probably Should't Write a Post about UVA

This is the first campus that I have simply walked off of.  This school is not for me.

I could probably end the post there, but I feel I owe it to you, dear reader, to explain myself a little better.  Firstly, it's huge.  I've been looking at schools with between 2,000 and 11,000 students; UVA has 21,000 students on campus.  That's all in round numbers, but I think the difference is significant.  That kind of number severely impacts the campus ambiance.  Which is to say that UVA feels really impersonal.  Admittedly, I had just come from a tour of Duke with a very popular freshman and from W&L where the Speaking Tradition mandates that you say hi to everyone you see; but it is still ridiculous to me that one wouldn't say hi to people.  That's just who I am and I saw none of that at UVA.  The info session leader talked about an Honor Code at UVA similar to that of Davidson, Wake, and W&L, but I don't believe that it could possibly be implemented on a campus that size.  Why?  Because people suck, that's why.  Out of 21,000 people, there are bound to be a few bad eggs that have never been caught before.  They'll get in, and they'll ruin it for the rest of us.  The info session was also really uninformative.  I sat in for 35 minutes of a 45 minute info session, and I learned nothing useful about the college.

So, yeah. That's pretty much it.  I will not be applying to UVA.

@georgeandbob

That's the Washington and Lee (hereafter to be referred to as W&L) admission office's twitter account.  Follow it.  It's pretty hilarious.

Setting aside awesome tweeting, I want to go to W&L.  That is a statement I make with one distinct reservation, but I'll get to that in a second.  First off, the campus is steeped in history.  From the little things like the fact that George Washington's original donation of $20,000 in stock of the James River Company still pays for $1.87 of every student's tuition and the plaques around campus commemorating Traveler (Lee's horse) set up and maintained by the Virginia Daughters of the Confederacy to big things like the Speaking Tradition and the Honor Code, W&L maintains it's history in a really cool, modern way.  The academics are also top notch, but that almost goes without saying.  I got the opportunity to skim the classes offered in the Religion Department (a department I am particularly interested in) and I pretty much wanted to take all of them.  They also have a strong technical theater program.  My stage tech teacher is actually a W&L alumnus, and he's awesome at tech and as a person, which is what actually steered me toward the university in the first place.  W&L is a university, but their only graduate program is their law school which only has 400 people in it; so the focus really is on the undergrads.  Everyone I've heard from has spoken to the fact that the professors and the students are really close, which is really nice.  The professors are also pretty legit themselves.  I was skimming some of the literature I picked up on the Physics department (another one of my interests) and I learned that the author of my school's AP Physics C textbook is a professor there.  That's pretty damn cool.  I also really love the campus ambiance.  The Honor Code and the Speaking Tradition are huge parts of that.  The Honor Code has its roots in Lee's declaration that the only rule of the school was that the students should "conduct themselves like gentlemen".  Nowadays, that is interpreted to mean "I will not lie, cheat, or steal" or violate the trust of the campus in any way.  Conviction of an Honor Code violation is grounds for immediate expulsion.  Clearly this is taken very seriously.  But it's not like there are expulsions every year.  The student body takes the Code very seriously and really doesn't violate it.  Which, in the grand scheme of things, means that they are decent human beings, but that's no small feat in today's world.  There's also the Speaking Tradition, which also dates back to Lee's tenure as president of the university.  It boils down to the fact that you say hi to people you see.  No matter what. Again, this probably should be considered basic human decency, but it really is exceptional that the students do this.

I could go on and on about the things I love about the campus and all the little stories about the history of the university, but I want to address one glaring "question mark" area: Greek Life.  I am not what one would consider a stereotypical sister; some people call me a hipster, but I reject labels.  Participation in Greek Life at W&L hovers around 85%.  On a campus of approximately 2,000 people total.  It's kind of a big deal.  I am assured that you're not screwed out of the social scene if you are not involved and I am assured that the sororities and fraternities are not stuck up about who's who, but still.... 85%.  That's a lot.

All in all, I loved Washington and Lee.  It's the first school about which I have actively said "I want to go here".  I embrace the trident that is the university's symbol; it's just that there is one significant pointy bit.

Eruditio et Religio

Go Blue Devils!  Tuesday saw a visit to Duke University, a fine example of gothic architecture.  In fact a very familiar kind of gothic architecture.  James Buchanan Duke was told by the Princeton Administration that he could not simply buy their university, so he went and built his own in Durham, North Carolina.  That is not something you learn on the tour; that is something you learn from an alumnus.  An alumnus like my dad.  And he is proud of it.  Which is slightly adorable.

Anyway, I really liked Duke.  We started off with a very informative info session, which was followed by a very passionate walking tour. Our guide was a freshman, so he was maybe not the best informed; but boy could you tell he was excited to be at Duke.  Personally, I don’t feel like I missed out on much because my dad was liberal with his asides to me regarding his college experience. 

But I do have to get something out of the way before I extol the virtues of Duke’s academics and athletics. Well, two somethings.

1.  They have the original lemur from Zaboomafoo.  For those of you who also grew up watching that show, you understand why that’s awesome.
2.  THEY HAVE A HOLODECK.

With regard to the second point, it’s technically an immersive virtual environment not a holographic environment; but I don’t care. Duke has a holodeck.  That makes the trekkie in me very, very happy.

With regard to less nerd-tastic aspects of the campus, I’m going to throw down a statistic and be done with how excellent the academics are.  99% of applicants to law school from Duke get in.  There is no pre-law program. I know, you’re thinking to yourselves “What is this madness?!”  Duke is just that cool.  Athletically, just Google Coach K, I’ll wait.  Note, you probably don’t have to, because if you haven’t heard of Duke Basketball you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10+ years.   When my dad went to school here, Duke was the best school no one had ever heard of.  But he was class of ’76. Things have changed since then.  Now everyone knows Duke is awesome.  A few of my friends hadn’t heard of Wake and Davidson; they had all heard of Duke.

How Much Nowhere Would You Like?

Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas or Pro Humanitate?  These are the questions I pose myself.


My spring break college odyssey began with a mad dash from the Charlotte Airport to Davidson College in Davidson, NC.  This is the first degree of isolation.  It's about 30 minutes from Charlotte, which is a major metropolis, to campus, but you wouldn't know it. Which is awesome.  I flat out love Davidson.  The tour began with a visit to the Belk Visual Arts Center that emphasized the fine arts requirement.  I am not a fine artist, so I won't stress it the same way they did, but Davidson seems to take art seriously.  Also, they have an original Rodin in the atrium.  Lucky for me, this art requirement can be satisfied in the performing arts (read: with stage tech), otherwise they'd have to prepare themselves for a concentration in stick figures.  With regard to the theater, it's gorgeous.  The college itself was founded as an all-male agrarian college, and - while it has evolved in nature - it has not much evolved in size.  Davidson is tiny.  But it seems to make up for it's physical size with history.  On the "Historic Quadrangle" are the Eumenean and Philanthropic Halls, home to the literary/debate societies at the college.  They stand about 50 feet apart and debates are conducted from their respective balconies.  Allegedly, Woodrow Wilson gave his first public address for the Eumenean Society in this format.  Did I mention President Wilson went here as an undergrad?  Because I think he's awesome.  He’s up there among my favorite presidents (don’t think I’m a dork for having favorite presidents).  Anyway the next stop on our tour was a quick walk through the sciences building.  There is a lab science requirement at Davidson, but the labs are capped at 32.  There are no TAs at Davison.  Every class is taught by a professor and, because they are pretty much all tiny, the students get to develop a really personal connection with their teachers.  If you really do want to get off campus to learn, Davidson has a very active study abroad program.  The programs that the college runs itself are somewhat limited, but it seems that if you really want to go somewhere, they will find you a program that runs through another university that will suit your needs.  Also awesome at Davidson is the laundry system.  In addition to a 24-hour student Laundromat that is free of charge and wifi connected (you can go online to see if machines are available and set things up such that you will receive a text message when your laundry is done), there is a Laundry service center that will wash, dry, press, and fold your laundry for you in a few days.  Which is awesome.  In terms of application, Davidson accepts all the usual stuff and asks that you fill out a “Why Davidson?” supplemental essay.  They also ask for a friend’s letter of recommendation, which is kind of interesting.  By friend they don’t mean teacher with whom you’ve bonded.  They mean actual friend who’s a peer.  As the saying goes: show me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.  To sum up the experience of the “Davidson Family/Mafia”, our guide shared with us a seriously cool story about the last time Davidson made it to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships.  In 2008, the Wildcats made it to Detroit and a bunch of alumni agreed to pay for transportation, rooms, and tickets for any Davidson student that wanted to go.  They bet on about 100; they got pretty much the entire student body.  But they stuck to their word and paid for everyone to go.  Which is an amazing display of school spirit, both on the part of the students and on the part of the alumni.  That, in a nutshell, is why I loved Davidson.

After Davidson, my dad and I drove another hour or so to Winston-Salem, one of three municipalities in the US that is legally written with a hyphen.  Winston-Salem is home to Wake Forrest University, the second stop on my spring break visit schedule.  Unfortunately the student body was on spring break, so we got an extra-in-depth info session and a pamphlet that outlined a self guided walking tour.  Thanks to the info session leader, I honestly don’t feel like I missed out on anything.  He did a really good job of giving us the personal experience side of the walking tour that we would have missed out on otherwise.  I think some of his enthusiasm came from the fact that Wake served as his first, first-hand experience of the states (he lived his youth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), but he was really excited about Wake.  Interestingly, Wake does not mandate that you send your standardized test scores.  If you feel that your test scores from one Saturday at 8 AM are representative of your academic abilities, then send them in.  Otherwise, they’re more interested in your career and grades in High School.  Wake is a University - as opposed to Davidson, which does not have a graduate program - but the classes are still kept small and are still taught by full professors.  TAs sometimes run review sessions for tests, but the professors keep office hours and keep themselves available.  And I can say from personal experience that they’re a nice bunch.  Just because the students were on break doesn’t mean the teachers were.  On our self-guided walking tour, my dad and I ran into the professor of technical theater in the Wake Forest “black box”.  This is the guy that runs the side of theater I’m interested in.  I was just poking my nose into their secondary theater space, I ran into him, and he took my dad and I on a tour of the main-stage space and the shop.  He was very excited to inform us that they’ll be getting some LED fixtures for the main-stage space and are looking to renovate the theater to make it bigger.  I also picked up a copy of the student run newspaper The Old Gold & Black and was quite impressed.  They had a feature on a speaker that recently came to campus to discuss religious freedom and tolerance.  I found this feature particularly interesting because of my particular interest in religious studies.  I think I ought to start picking up more of these student newspapers…

On a more cultural note, I have learned a few things about the south:

1. 1It is not abnormal to see churches along the highway as often as you would see a Starbucks in NYC.
2. Brown Sugar and Mayonnaise go on everything

Shout out to Simplyummy in Winston-Salem for a delicious grilled cheese sandwich.  I had no idea that Brown Sugar could taste so good on a grilled cheese sandwich…

Tribes

As my teachers will attest, I do not like feeling like I have missed something.  I am well known for coming in for extra help regarding topics that I know full well will be elucidated in the next class.  So perhaps you can imagine my opinion of a play that centers on the concept of missing things.  Nina Raines's Tribes at the Barrow Street Theater is that play.  An import from London's Royal Court Theater, this dramatic comedy is about passive and active listening and hearing.  And very probably about deciding who is the biggest ass in the show.  Because, to be perfectly honest, even the hearing characters don't hear each other.  Everyone lacks some ability to connect to the outside world and almost all of them fundamentally do not or cannot hear some majority of the other characters.  And the actors do an amazing job of acting it.  Really, that is very well done.  As is the scenic design.  Scott Pask has created a wonderfully neurotic living/dining room for the family whose interactions drive the play.  The problem is that the play they're driving is a rather heavy handed one.  It is pretty funny in the first act; it just gets preachy in the second.  The characters the actors inhabit are nothing new.  Dad is an academic critic who is never anything other than critical, mom is vaguely writing a "marriage breakdown detective novel", Daniel is writing a thesis (kind of), Ruth is trying to pursue a career singing arias in pubs, and Billy is generally a bystander to their cacophonous arguments because he's the deaf one.  On the surface they may seem unique, but there's not much to distinguish them from any of the dysfunctional families you’ve probably met before in fiction (like J. D.Salinger’s tales of the Glass family) or film (like Wes Anderson’s “Royal Tenenbaums”).  They're all pretending at some kind of significance and none of them are succeeding.  Only the actors seem to win in this show because they carry off these stereotypes as though they were in fact as new as the writer seems to think they are.  The ensemble really does an excellent job with a play that is heavy handed at best.  As staged by Mr. Cromer supertitles are projected during signed sequences, but irregularly, so sometimes we lose the thread. The in-the-round configuration for this production means that at different points different actors will have their backs to us. And you’re increasingly aware of the importance of where everyone is standing, how bright or dark the stage is (according to Keith Parham’s lighting) and how loud or muffled offstage noises are.  


All in all I think it was interesting.  I just can't say I enjoyed it.

Another Empowered Woman Assembly

I attend a college-preparatory day school for girls, so the "how to be an empowered woman" assemblies are nothing new; but I think they're really laying it on thick this year.  In any event, this last one was actually pretty good.  The Dr. Jane Berman Memorial Lecture Series kicked off with Dr. Jennifer Lawless.  Finally the powers that be have seen fit to give us an academic! I think that might be my problem with the vast majority of our empowering women lectures; they reek of propagandist agendas.  This lecture was balanced and accepted both sides of the argument.  This woman was neither a politician nor a journalist.  She was an academic!  And it was wonderful.

Dr. Lawless, a Ph.D in Political Science (the art of finding empirical evidence for the obvious) from Stanford, delivered a balanced lecture on why women don't run and why they should.  I'll give you a preview of why they should: it's not because we're just better at everything than men.  After surveying men and women regarding their political ambitions in the fields of law, business, activism, and education (the four fields most likely to breed political ambition), Dr. Lawless and her team observed a huge gender gap with regard to their political ambition.  After further surveying, she and her team were able to enumerate three main reasons that women don't run even though women do just as well as men when they run.

1. Family Responsibilities
2. Qualifications
3. Recruitment

With regard to family responsibilities, women are still about ten times more likely than men to be responsible for household duties.  Which is not to say that having family responsibilities precludes candidacy, but to say that it does make it more complicated.  It's essentially like having three jobs: whatever pays the bills, being a mother, and running a campaign.  That means that women tend to put off running until their children are out of the house, which (in our political system) means that they have to climb the ladder quickly, start higher, or be content to stay lower.  Which is not ideal to say the least.

Women are also more likely to doubt their qualifications.  They see the fact that less than 20% of elected offices are held by women, so they consider themselves a political anomaly, so they think they have to be way overqualified to hold office.  Lawless told a couple stories from her own political campaign in RI to illustrate this point.  Apparently, when she was running, she was worried that she would be considered under qualified because she was not actually from Rhode Island.  So she essentially memorized the RI almanac.  So, when a caller on a radio interview asked her what effect a ~10% job loss really had on the population of Rhode Island and "What is the population of Rhode ISland anyway?" she answered with the exact population of RI.  Which is kind of creepy.  The other story she told us actually kind of reinforced the idea that women have to be slightly more qualified to be successful. It has to do with look.  See, women in politics tend to look the same.  Which is to say mannish.  And it remains true that women have to meet a certain appearance bar to engage with the voters.  They both have to look really nice but also not too feminine.  Heels and highlights, combined with matte makeup and pants suits.  But, according to the statistics, in comparable campaign efforts women do just as well as men.  They loose just as often as men when running against incumbents and they beat non-incumbents just as often in elections for an open seat.

The third barrier to prospective female candidates is recruitment.  The best predictor of whether women will run is whether they've been told/encouraged to run.  This is kind of the one factor we can change.  Women are both much less likely to be encouraged and much less likely to respond to encouragement.  So basically the message of the lecture is it's never too early to start recruiting women to run.  I know you're all bracing yourselves for me to start ranting against feminism, but the next words out of Dr. Lawless's mouth made my heart smile.  According to her, it's totally ok if you decide not to run, you just need to be able to make the choice yourself.  Hallelujah!  Thank you for respecting that!  This is what we should be told, not "If you don't run/act like an empowered woman, you're a submissive fail and part of the problem that it is your duty to solve."  This speech was not a turn off for any ambitions that might be incubating in my brain.  Because I do kind of agree that we should see more women in politics.  For me it's a question of democratic legitimacy.  There is a slight majority of females in the population of the US, but they only hold about %20 percent of all elected offices.  That's not republicanism.  Since we've given women the right to vote, we should see them represented and representing in office.

The part 2 of this lecture was a screening of Miss Representation, but I didn't go to that even though it was mandatory.  It was production week for the musical and I had to be in the theater.  But I actually would have gone.  I was actually somewhat inspired by this lecture.  I haven't been inspired by an empowerment lecture in a long time...  

Contraception and Catholicism

Regardless of whether the issue has been resolved legally speaking as of this writing (and to my knowledge it has), a proposed mandate that religious institutions pay for female contraception has sparked a, let's say interesting, discourse in this nation at the center of which is the question "Does it violate my institutional religious freedom to be told that I must pay for contraception when the concept of contraception is against my religious beliefs?"  This, to my mind, is a fascinating question.  I would not normally tackle an issue like this because, in spite of my gender, I am not particularly interested in women's issues; however this one strikes me as important because this one, at its core, is political.  Purely and completely political.  Of course there is the issue of religious freedom, which I am all for.  I think it is one of the things that makes this country great.  The 1st and the 19th amendments are my favorites (don't think I'm a dork, I like freedoms and voting).  But, because of the language that this issue has taken on, the issue of institutional religious freedom versus personal religious freedom has become a political battle. Because The Church (by which I mean The Vatican or The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church) picks its battles in the secular arena.  In the social justice arena, the Catholic Church does, has done, and will very probably continue to do wonderful things.  Feeding, clothing, and sheltering the needy is a task that must be done and, when the federal government can't handle it, it is a task that is very often assumed by religious institutions.  However, we now see candidates in the Republican field who are either Catholic or supported by some Catholics who support the death penalty and/or have been divorced.  While St. Thomas Aquinas may have been resolutely in favor of the death penalty, that view has fallen somewhat out of favor of late.  Divorce is also generally accepted by the Catholic laity.  It happens in America.  It's as simple as that.  These are not issues that can be brought up as issues of doctrine because they happen in America.  The Catholic Church can't come out saying that we, as a nation, can't use the death penalty or grant divorces because it violates their religious freedom; yet Catholic institutions can come out and say that they refuse to pay for female contraception as part of their insurance plans for that reason.  It would seem that The Church has chosen it's battle ground.  And those who support this view seem to fight their battles with the language of persecution. It's like Rick Santorum saying that JFK's speech on religious tolerance made him throw up a little because he interpreted it to mean that people of faith have no place in the public arena.  This is simply not the case.  Some of our arguably best presidents would be completely unelectable today because of their perceived lack of faith and none of today's candidates would be electable 50-60 years ago because they talk about their faith too much (among other reasons).  No religion is persecuted in the United States of America.  Mocked? Sure.  People are terrible and intolerant.  But we as Americans do not persecute anyone.  We have come a long way, as people, from issuing the Jeremiads of the Puritan days.  Unfortunately, it seems our national discourse has regressed.  Ultimately, the question of contraception comes down to the golden rule.  An institution has a right to abide by its religious and moral convictions, but it cannot infringe on the rights of those who work for their institution who are not of the same faith.  Do unto others, man.  It's that simple.