Reboot

School is back on, and all is well.

I'm a week and a half into the semester, and I'm adjusting to the whole daily regimen that comes with univeristy pseudo studies. "Pseudo studies", there's a good term for the last 30 months here. And it still applies in a way, only now it has a more positive meaning. Gone are the days of studying just enough to pass tests, learning stuff that stopped being interesting last semester. Gone are the days of using academic language and long words in order to get top marks on a paper for which I hardly opened the books. Well, not entirely gone, I guess, but the level of motivation is higher than before, and the information is actually useful, despite the fact that it gets pretty theoretical at times.

We haven't really gotten to the actual writing yet, the teachers are sticking to theoretical parts for next few months, and right now we're slogging through the various legal and ethical aspects of journalism. And I have to say, it's really interesting. Alot of my classmates seem to dislike the legal stuff, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, etc, but for me it's just dandy. When it comes to law, my experience is mainly in international law, human rights law and humanitarian law. And it couldn't be more different. In international law, alot of what is written down is done with only a loose basis of common law, and no precedent or established juris prudence, which basically means that no one knows how the law should be put into practice, or how to apply it when it actually does. And when circumstances change, for example the downfall of nation-to-nation warfare, everything pretty much falls apart, because the Geneva Conventions, for example, were written 60 years ago.

Not the case with national laws. Now we have precedent, jurisprudence, and clear definitions, and thus everything works as it's supposed to. Mostly. Anyway, it doesn't make you lose all hope in humanity, which makes all the difference when trying to learn it. And there are generally less headaches involved as well.

Anywho, things are going good so far. This is going to be an interesting semester. Not only in school, I also have a couple of trips planned. Granted, both are to the same place, but they're still two separate events. My buddy Christian is in the process of moving to Arvidsjaur, which lies a bit to the north of here. 10 miles south of the Arctic Circle, to be exakt. Now, this is the place where the German car companies take their new cars for cold weather testing, which says something about the climate. The average temperature for the entire year is 0 degrees Centigrade, which is the freezing point. So one could argue that it's freezing all year round, but that's not true. It's freezing for nine months out of the year. And I'm going up there in mid November. And yes, it'll be freezing. And I'll be there over New Year's as well. It'll be colder than... well, anything I've ever experienced before. But it'll be fun. We're taking the train, which'll be an adventure in itself, all 20 hours of it.

That's what I had for now. Out.