100th post

Wow, I can't believe I've gotten here.

As I'm struggling with the larger contextual issues of writing personal statements to apply to doctoral programs, I'm reflecting on the topic of my research for my qualitative methods course - security guards and janitors organizing together at Harvard.

One of the students in my class did one of his participant observation fieldwork notes at the forum meeting the other night with the WTO secretary general speaking. Protesters chanted outside the event, and a few were inside. After a few protesters interrupted the speech, they were escorted out. However, they then took out protesters who hadn't said a thing but were in collusion or association with the outspoken protesters. Unbelievable (well, sort of).

The interesting twist is that the initial removal of protesters was done by Harvard security guards (later, the more"professional", plain clothes cops and other personnel were brought in) - and it was the same labor group supporting the security guards organizing that sent me an e-mail about the protest. Did security officer organizing student supporters get taken out of the event by these same security guards???

As I'm trying to write my statement for UC Davis...
I want to go to UC Davis because I want to take a long train ride every day. I want to go to UC Davis b/c it’s one of the few options out there. I want to go to UC Davis b/c I’m desperate. I don’t want to go to grad school. I want to stay home and bake cookies. I want to go to UC Davis to study with cool Marxists there. I want to go to UC Davis because Lori is there.