DEC-B-3

 

THE FLURRY OF MEETINGS AND LAST-OF-THE-YEAR ARRANGEMENTS BEFORE DEPARTURE FOR THE CHRISTMAS ROAD TRIP

 

December 15--17, 2003

 

I have scrambled around as the weekend’s snow cover began melting under the weekday high temperatures approaching fifty degrees.  So, our pre-Christmas snow flurries were an aberration and it may still be the case that I had once claimed, that it was unnecessary to wear a topcoat before New Year’s Eve in the subtropics of Maryland where I live.  If one gets accustomed to this as the “default position” then, a real February winter like the one this past year catches the thin bloods off balance.

 

 I went to Derwood to see if I could assist the plumbers’ dilemma about how they could get into the attic, as densely packed as it is, and carry out their mandated venting through the roof.  The biggest problem that has prevented me and anyone else from accomplishing anything up there is that there are four fluorescent lights and a couple of incandescent ones, all of which are turned on with a single switch flooding the attic with better “reading light” than I can find in most other places.  However, the electricians had disabled the switch and re-wired that area so that it is possible only to stumble around in the dark, tipping over stacks of boxes and spilling their contents on the floor, thoroughly trashing the attic even more so, with the compacting of the stuff to make it possible to get the one quarter of the space cleared for the walk-in cedar closet now framed in.  I tried to retrieve some items up there, and could not see anything even in the light of day.  I likewise could not get into the guest bedroom where I was going to file away the slides I had returned with from the Berkshire Medical Center’s Grand Rounds—since the door is locked, and the small metal key we had left on the stud jam, was thrown away.  So, I had completely struck out at Derwood on anything useful I might try to do there, and will have to let the crew make do as best they can in my absence, returning for the first of the New Year.

 

            I made it to Carl Dees to get my haircut and to deliver him my year-end letter (he is one of the few who has kept the entire series intact).  I went to GW to relay the orders on the dining room and foyer chandeliers which will be started in production with the deposit, and I also called Bray and Scarf to get their package of the high-end Viking appliances as a unified order that should be discounted from the manufacturer’s high suggested retail price (it is suspicious when everything I read ends in $999.95 following an initial number ranging from 1 to 7.  They have the commitment that any other offer I can find in writing that is lower, they will match the price, so I will go to the one other high-end retail appliance house for Viking stainless steel at Great Indoors.  And, for the last hard driven bargains of the day, the original mortgage loan application which remains good for 120 days and offered 5.8 % 30-year fixed rate until they learned that the inside of the house had been gutted and was not “habitable,”   I asked about the other offers I was getting in the mail of lower rates.  The response was that those are all ARM’s with lower rates.  So a mortgage lender in Annapolis made me a firm offer in writing for a 30-year fixed rate term locked for 60 days of 5.#%--a full half percent less, which makes a great deal of difference in monthly payments.  So, I am shopping around for some of the things that would otherwise be to accept whatever I had been advised to take in the first instance.

 

 

THE GROUP AND INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEWS

OF THE ELDP AT THE GWU ASHBURN VA CAMPUS

 

December 16, 2003

 

            I tried, once again, to get out to the Ashburn Virginia GWU campus early, and once again got diverted around the confusing Dulles Airport corridor of toll roads and limited access highways.  I had had an important phone call just before relating to a serious state of mind and needed to respond to it, and then hustled out to the scheduled interview for the ELDP program,  Late, again.

 

            I may have been the only one not nervous about the appearance there, since the others are all competing to get in to this doctoral program which is a job requirement for some of them in a terminal doctorate degree.  I am already there, so it is only if I am interested that I would be taking the “slot” in “Cohort 16” if offered.  The “deal” offered to David Schwandt, physicist, when he first came, was that if he used all the conventions—a core of graded courses, Comprehensive exams, and thesis committees with dissertation defense, as traditional in all doctorate programs, he could experiment with the format in not having students in residence on campus on a daily and weekly basis, but would assemble a group from all over for one weekend a month for an intensive series of courses with all the other work remaining the same.  There are even “Boot Camps” in which the Cohort must move in to a place like Airlie House for twelve hour days together to get a “group think” going.  It may, or may not be the thing for me.

 

            The group assembled included one woman named Ermina whom I had met on the last readings session, who will fly in from Bermuda each time class is held.  That is less distance than others who had been flown in by their companies from Saudi Arabia or from Europe each time a class was held, and in this group of applicants, several of the applicants come down from New York and one from California.  Against this, I was asked to answer a question “Why, at this stage and age, already having several doctorates and other degrees, would you want to become a resident again?”

 

            I adjourned to a two on one interview with Rhonda, a perfectly coiffed, manicured and dressed beautiful black woman and Brad Lafferty, a faculty now and former Cohort graduate.  He said to me “I have been in the military and advisor in the White House, and a POW; and this program has changed me more than anything else in my life; are you prepared for just such a fundamental and radical change?  Do you know how hard it is?  And how will you relate to all the other eager students who are seeking to get what you so obviously already have?”  I had fun responding to such questions although he added that his wife would have to read my papers since she, as well as his mentor in the program named Marshall, were both ruthless editors.

 

            The conclusion was a one page “writing sample” in which we were to turn in a long-hand generated paragraph on a subject that had been discussed during our interview.  Since corporate culture had been one of the items discussed, and since I had the anthropologic background to do the culture part, I wrote a one page note and turned it in without reading it further.  I believe they would find me literate, and as one person close to me might have added: “His life is not an ‘Open Book” but a burgeoning encyclopedia!”

 

 

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