The Met

The first Friday of the trip was bittersweet. It means we're almost a third of the way through the class so far, but also hey - TGIF! Today was a good day all around, class was fun, food was good and my after class experience was enjoyable as well.

In class today we discussed yesterday's article - which was about the dispute over whether Lincoln actually violated the constitution. I found the article interesting - it was not as easy to interpret as the day before - there seemed to be a multitude of arguments presented in the article and though the author presented a thesis early on, his position seemed to evolve and new arguments were presented. In class, Professor Porwancher addressed the different ways of interpreting the constitution, which brought about a lot of thought on how Lincoln may have personally interpreted the constitution. The article also discussed the possibility that Lincoln actually regarded the Declaration of Independence as the primary document of reference when considering how the founders wanted the country to be governed. The bottom line of the discussion today was promoted by the (not rhetorical) question our professor asked us - how can we really know what our subject was thinking? This is something I will have to keep in mind when doing my research. 

After the discussion a guest speaker, who had worked on Hillary Clinton and then Barack Obama's campaigns came to speak to us. We learned a bit about what it's like inside the White House, and what sort of things went into making a campaign work. At the end of class we split into groups and designed our own ads. I think it's interesting how strong the focus on politics is in our class, because I totally expected it to be a history class. 

After class I went to the Met with some of my classmates and suitemates. At first I was a little skeptical about spending 4 hours in an art museum, but my friend Claire and I spent 2 hours alone wandering around the European painting exhibit. I was unfortunately unable to see everything in the Met (not even close). 

Finally at night I had a great bonding session with both my group of suite-mates and the girls down the hall. We talked about our high points and low points and everybody was very bubbly and funny the whole time.