Graduate-itis

This was most of us in college.

Sprawled out on a blanket in the quad on a nice sunny day when you knew Spring was coming and so was graduation.

Wait, why is it so cold out? Oh that's right! You were skipping your team meeting and your only class of the day because you just did not feel like going.

I have long since moved past those days but it seems that some people have not.

So when did graduate students become so lazy?

I think it is the simple fact that while yeah, we have tons of work to do on top of looking for a job and trying to get to our current job on time, lets not forget that their is a thesis in there too somewhere, we carry our undergrad habits with us. Most of us break them in the first week or so when there is suddenly a stack of reading that comes to your knee.

Unlike undergrad, the professors will know when you are not doing the work. Well, if the professor is any good they will. The Socratic method becomes your worst enemy, especially if you are in law school. You never really seem to get your head above water.

Two classes a term my ass. You might as well be taking a seventeen hour schedule with Farsi or Chinese as your foreign language.

I am mostly doing this article because I have become burned out. Graduate school is just not kicking it anymore for me but with one term left, I'm not gonna bug out now. That's dumb. I would not have left with two terms left just to work at the Men's Warehouse and contemplate going back to school.

I don't sleep in past meetings just because it seems like the fun thing to do. I go to class and if I still had a job, I would go to work. I would come home and do my reading, fire off a handful of emails, make some dinner, do more reading, workout, shower, watch the new, and go to bed. I would get up and do it all over again the next day. I might invite my girlfriend over. You never know.

Graduate-itis is no better than senior-itis but to sit around and blow off stuff when you are this close is just lost on me. I do not understand that laziness that pervades the student culture these days.

Inauguration Day

As a political science major in undergrad and an intelligence studies major for my graduate work, the time when America gets a new CEO means a lot to me.

Barack Obama became the 44th POTUS today and even though I did not vote, I can say that I watched the speech and was generally pleased at the promises that will undoubtedly be altered in the coming years.

One thing that has really bugged me today is some of the blog coverage that I follow.

I read alot on a daily basis. I follow forty-five news feeds and other recreational feeds on any given day and the sentiment seemed so harsh out of those that took the time to make a post today.

Some were calling Obama the first affirmative action president ever elected. I think that is a cruel statement to make when you look at the PR campagin that his staff put on.

He done something that has been a key in warfare back to the times of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, he won the hearts and minds of America. He connected with first time voters in a way that no presidential candidate had ever dreamed of. John McCain's daughter, Meghan, had a blog that she contributed to but that no where skimmed the surface of the Obama campagin.

I had a teaching job over the summer and I am still friends on facebook with some of the kids I taught. These are high school kids who won't be able to vote until the next election in 2012 but you would have thought that US constitution had been rewritten to allow for the average sixteen year old to vote.

In short, it was a strategic if not an operational failure for all the other candidtates who stepped up to the plate this year. The Obama team struck at key points quickly and rounded up the support to win an election of historical precedence.

Good luck, sir and may God bless your administration and the United States.

Christmas and New Years Round Up

We are three days into 2009 and I am finally sitting down and talking about the holidays. I did not end up getting anything footy related this year for Christmas but that's fine. I did make out rather nicely though. I got a Tennessee jersey, The Dark Knight, a new wallet, and very nice pocket watch. I have not got my presents from my roommates or my girlfriend yet, so there is no telling what I am getting when I get back to Erie tomorrow.

I did go out and buy myself some stuff after Christmas. I got a new cardigan, and two new sweaters, and new tie.

I have also been giving my humidor a workout as of late. I have found a new favorite smoke in the form of the CAO LX2. It is a really smooth smoke that allows the smoke time to cool between puffs.

I also had a Partegas maduro a few weeks back. It was rather splendid as well.

I recommend, if you are a smoker, to go out and patronize these two cigar companies. They are both amazing brands and are worth some praise.

The Favela Project

Dixieland Footie has found causes left and right that it supports wholeheartedly. From shipping balls to Iraqi children in the memory of Nick Madras, to the Homeless World Cup.

I believe that football is one of the more significant driving forces in the world today.

It is the most popular sport by far and it draws players from every corner of the globe.

We have seen, in the case of Pele, of how it can lift people out of oppression. There are stories of how it has brought civil wars to a halt because the country's national team qualified for their first cup in years. It is truly one of the few equalizers left in the modern world.

Dixieland Footie would like to announce a new group who are striving to bring the game and all its beautifulness to children in poor towns.

The Favela Project is a non-profit that is working towards providing poor children with the equipment they need to play the game and truly succeed and change their stars.

Go support them or your team will never win the league.. ever again.

The Friday Edition

So, I am going to start a new thing here at Dixieland. Friday's will be a omni-post of things that
have crossed my mind for the the last week. It's kind of something kick off the weekend with.

And I know what you are saying, "Bela, it's Thursday, mate. Have a lil something extra in your cuppa tea this morning, yeah?"

No, I'm not drunk. However, I do not have class on Friday, so once I get out of military history on Thursday's, my weekend begins. I suppose I could change this to The Thursday Edition but that would require me to move my mouse up to the title bar and delete Friday and write in Thursday.

-I have seen some recent pictures on facebook, myspace, and another message board that I post to that have solidified my belief that you should have to have a license to operate a digital camera recreationally.

The simple fact that you went out and bought one does not come with the right to subject your friends, or personal associates with pictures of you taken at rather inopertune times.

-After sitting through my military history lecture today, I have came up with the perfect anology to describe the oft times heated relationship between the different intelligence agencies.

The inteilligence community, or IC as we gov. acronymn soup people like to call it, is like the SEC. No, no. Not the security and exchange comission but the south eastern conference in college football.

Anyone who has ever went to an SEC school will understand me when I say that the conference is back to back rivalry games. You hate any other team that isn't your own. That's pretty much how the IC is and why we expereince intelligence failures on such a broad scale.

Islamaphobia: Not Just For the US Anymore.

I realize that the title of this article may seem a bit "racy" but it seems that the general fear of peoples of the Islamic faith is spreading outside the boarder of the US.

The event that sparked this article occurred at matched between Middlesbrough and Newcastle on the weekend. An Egyptian player, Ahmed Mido, was warming up on the pitch when the two fans started to chant at him.

The FA has agreed to look into the matter but Mido has stated that the insults went beyond him and struck at his faith.

While the two individuals were removed from the ground and will have to face a judge, it is likely that the worst penalty they will receive will be a lifetime ban from Newcastle games. This gives them the freedom to go to another Middlesbrough match and taunt Mido again, or any other Islamic player for that matter.

You would think that with as much racism that has went on in English football for the past quater of a century, that the FA would have done more than just an annual campagin and match bans to quel the improprerly motivated attacks on player, both physical and verbal.

I suppose the FA has more to worry about such as building the grassroots programs and paying off Wembley.

Body by Soccer.

While I was home for Thanksgiving break, I had a chance to catch up on some cable shows. We don't have cable here at the house, you can imagine what I'm like on match days with no ESPN.

I ended up laying on the couch and watching a marathon of True Life on MTV. There was an episode about these two individuals that could not control their eating habits, so they both experimented with dieting.

The gentleman cut himself off from his family and friends and ate a meal of 800 calories once a day.

One meal for the entire day.

He went from roughly 340 pounds down to 214 in around a years time. He was pushing himself to loose the weight so much that he went out and ran steps on the night before he reached his goal weight. He was exhausted to the point of near sleep from doing so because he was not taking in the food his body needed.

The young lady experimented with crash dieting. Apparently the experiment never worked, because she continued to do it over and over again. She participated in very little physical exercise during her diets but she would loose the weight. However, she would gain most, and oft times more, of it back once she went off the diet.

I think that it is sad that people cannot bring themselves to find an activity and participate in it instead of locking themselves in an apartment for a year, or crash dieting.

I started playing soccer casually at first, simply because I had never touched a ball outside of a school gym. But then it became more than that to me. It became a pursuit. A need. My balls, my cleats, and my gloves are all my friends.

My weight has fluctuated a lot since I started playing. I attribute most of it to breaking my leg last summer. I have never given up though. When my heart races from bounding down the wing with the ball and delivering a beautiful cross, it makes me want to be in better shape so the ball goes further when I swing my leg at it.

I suppose it takes getting to that point. If you have the fortitude to eat 800 calories a day, then I am sure you have the fortitude to do ball work for forty five minutes a day.

My daily routine, when it is not too cold to venture out, consists of general stops of the ball. Simple passes against a wall coupled with trapping exercises. Throw in some cuts, crossovers, turns and pullbacks. After all that is done, I juggle. I always do 100 touches a foot.

By the end I am sweating and I feel better than when I started.

Some people have told me that it is impossible to loose my weight.

Impossible is nothing.