Hello reading audience! It's been way too long since you heard anything from me. The reason is that I've been really busy over the past couple of weeks. It has been a lot of fun though. But just really busy, leaving little time to report about it.
Now is a good time to write an overdue blog entry. I just came home from a one-credit class where I had some wine so I'm not really feeling like doing schoolwork. The class is one devised by a student of my school and is titled "French Environmental Conversation". The idea is to talk in French about environmental issues and in doing so improving vocabulary in the environmental field. I don't think I am going to take it though, because time has become a very scarce good and here in New Haven there's only 7 days in a week and only 24 hours in a day. And an hour only lasts 60 minutes. And the minutes on this side of the Atlantic Ocean aren't any longer than those in Belgium. Unfortunately.
Let me talk about the first weeks of class, and for now put the tales from the Yale-Myers Forest and Great Mountain Forest off until later. I'll talk about it somewhere in the future, and add some pictures, because the last two weeks of MODs were great fun and should not go unmentioned in this account of this new stage in my life.
As for all the little kids in Belgium, school officially started on the first of September. In between MODs and then, we had some more information sessions about Yale, the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and the programs at our school (all the requirements which, as I have understood, can all be bent). We even had a course expo with all the professors to have an idea of what's on offer in 2010-2011. All of this was accompanied by plenty of free food and drinks - much appreciated by all of the graduate students, happy to get some material value for their enormous tuition fees.
The first two weeks (ending in a couple of hours) are 'shopping period' at Yale. This means that you can sit in on any class and try it out. This is great because there are so many interesting courses and some of them can in this way be eliminated without a troubled conscience by seeing for yourself that the teaching method or the professor are not exactly your cup of tea.
By now, I finally know for sure what my semester will look like, coursewise. One course is Landscape Ecology. It's not in line with anything I did before coming here, but it is one of the 'Foundation' courses for my degree and is thus 'required' (brackets indicate the flexibility at the school). The professor teaches well and he got me into the course at his introduction for it: he said that it would 'enhance my understanding of the world'. As I am well aware that I do not understand the world and realize it every day, I just had to take this course. No doubt about it. I cannot yet say that I feel smarter and more all-knowing, but so far the classes have been interesting. So no regrets.
Then there's Economics of the Environment. I already knew something about this subject as I had attended some classes at the University of Antwerp last year, but now I'm really into it, homework and all. The first classes were quite simple, explaining about supply and demand, but now it's getting more applied. The best thing is that the school hired a professor that is an extremely gifted teacher and I sincerely enjoy paying attention. The American system is quite different from the Belgium one, and this becomes very clear in Economics of the Environment. There is much more interaction between the professor and the students and this emphasizes that it's his job to make the students understand the subject to the fullest. He will explain the same thing over and over again if he thinks it was not clear to the class.
It will take me some time to get used to this, as during my studies in Ghent I do not remember having spoken up even once in class - whenever I lost track, which was not rare, I just shut up and would take a look at the subject at home to try to understand. Here in the US that's not how it's done, since the students get graded for their participation in class. This, however, leads to situations in which students will say anything just to make themselves heard. I think I'll stick to shutting up instead, until I have an intelligent remark to make.
A third class I was going to take was an introductory course about policy of the environment. At first it seemed very interesting, also because the professor has quite a unique way of teaching. His class is full of anecdotes and funny remarks, and he spent almost half of the first lecture talking about the fact that he is Canadian and how wonderful his country is (I believed him). The problem is that I couldn't find the connection between the anecdotes, and I wasn't the only one. I felt dumber with every lecture, often thinking to myself "What is this guy talking about?" Apparently, he told us, he deliberately wanted to confuse us and get us completely disoriented, and then spend the rest of the semester trying to undo the chaos. I have (wisely, I think) decided to put off this social science course until next year, when maybe my brain, still geared to engineering, will be flexible enough...
Finally, there are my personal core courses, one about energy systems analysis, the other a seminar about technology and society. The Austrian professor is a little bit eccentric. On the one hand, I like it, but on the other hand he also scares me somewhat. I hope that as I get to know him better, the latter feeling will dissolve and the former will prevail.
One of the unique things about him is that he is (quoting him) the faculty member who spends most of his faculty budget on booze and food. This will be consumed during various 'social events' in the fall semester, most of them after lectures by invited speakers, to stimulate informal discussions about the topic of energy in all of its aspects. His other course, the seminar, is a bit more exclusive, in the sense that more people wanted to take the class than he could fit around a table. I'm happy to say that I got in, so I'll be enjoying even more social events (some of which will even be held at his home with distinguished guests of his) for that course. I expect to report further on our relationship with the professor as it evolves...
I noticed that this entry is getting quite long again - I will try to keep messages more limited in length in the future and publish them more frequently. Let me just quickly write down what else my present life is all about.
Apart from my coursework, I'll be doing some research of about 10h per week at the School of Engineering among Italians. The project is about the development of a cook stove that is cheap and clean and efficient and will hopefully be deployed in selected third world countries to improve the lives of many people. This project will allow me to do something that is actually useful with my engineering background, and I am quite excited about it.
I'm also helping out a fellow student from the UK with building a windmill. He has been doing it for 6 months in Africa and the idea is to teach people how to make windmills out of locally available materials, so that they can charge their cell phones. A very nice project which has been received with a lot of enthousiasm by all the faculty that we talked to, and the supervisor of the workshop we are using is completely on our side and wants to learn how to build one of his own. He's getting us every we need and it's just wonderful! I'm glad I got involved in this.
Another thing that will keep me busy this weekend is the Yale/UNITAR Conference. It's the second edition of the event hosted at Yale by the University and the UN Institute for Training and Research, and it's about environmental governance and democracy. This year the focus is on climate change. If you want to learn more, take a look here. I will be working as a volunteer and this gives me access to the entire conference (and all of its facilities, including delicious food and tasty cocktails in an amazing setting). A lot of interesting people (Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC) will be there and I look forward to meeting them. I can't wait to get into my suit and work with the crew - I absolutely love feeling important!
Finally, there's CouchSurfing! I have had six guests in total since I arrived in New Haven and another guest is coming tomorrow. Unfortunately, I've had to deny some requests because they would have inconvenienced the household too much, but generally we're quite hospitable. I am becoming very proud of my profile which contains praising references by friends and guests, and I have even been vouched for yesterday! This is a big thing in couchsurfing and means that an important member in the community thinks that I'm a good person and couchsurfer and will put his reputation on the line for me...
Enough for now. Much more will happen in my life and I will do my best to keep up with the reports. I hope you enjoy reading them...
