Saturday night was what we all considered “graduation,” though it was not a cap and gown affair. Our program sponsored a dinner in our honor at 1789, a spiffy restaurant near Georgetown’s campus. The dinner was held in an upstairs room that deserves at least some description.
It was relatively small considering there were 30 of us to fit in it, but nice. The walls were painted an off-white and there were pictures hung on all of the walls, and it was the pictures that made the room so interesting. One could request drinks through a pass-through-type window, about 3ft x 4ft, that was cut out of one of the walls. When the reception finished and the dinner started, the pass-through closed, and there were pictures hung on the portion of the wall that closed. There was also a service door that could just as well have been a secret escape. The door disappeared when it was closed – there were pictures hung on it and the crown molding met up at the top. When it was opened, the pictures and crown molding moved with the door, despite that 2 inches of picture frame stuck out beyond the door when it was opened. (I feel like I’m doing a really poor job of describing it, but trust me, it was very interesting.) We felt like we might not be able to find a way out had they closed all the doors at the same time.
The reception that started the evening was nice, and dinner was expensive tasting. You know how certain flavors just taste expensive? Yeah. It was that kind of a meal. Shrimp or gazpacho as an appetizer; a salad; chicken, crab cakes, or lamb for a main course; and crème bruele for dessert.
After dinner there was the presentation of certificates to the graduates (because our diplomas will be mailed to us next month), and we, as a class, presented gifts to our professors. We decided to go with a gag gift and a serious gift for each.
Lynn taught a class on the federal bureaucracy, and we learned about the policy stream or how public policy is made. The truth is that no piece of legislation or public policy is made in exactly the same way, so one can only speak in generalities. One of the policy models we studied was by Kingdon, and it involved a trash can, policy primeval soup (what Jay endearingly called “raw sewage”), a number of streams flowing side by side that eventually couple or join, and a window through which the toxic waste must flow at the appropriate time. We got Lynn a bucket (to represent the trash can) and some water guns to represent the streams of policy making. You can see the horror on her face below as she realized that maybe we didn’t really get all that she’d tried to teach us.
It was relatively small considering there were 30 of us to fit in it, but nice. The walls were painted an off-white and there were pictures hung on all of the walls, and it was the pictures that made the room so interesting. One could request drinks through a pass-through-type window, about 3ft x 4ft, that was cut out of one of the walls. When the reception finished and the dinner started, the pass-through closed, and there were pictures hung on the portion of the wall that closed. There was also a service door that could just as well have been a secret escape. The door disappeared when it was closed – there were pictures hung on it and the crown molding met up at the top. When it was opened, the pictures and crown molding moved with the door, despite that 2 inches of picture frame stuck out beyond the door when it was opened. (I feel like I’m doing a really poor job of describing it, but trust me, it was very interesting.) We felt like we might not be able to find a way out had they closed all the doors at the same time.
The reception that started the evening was nice, and dinner was expensive tasting. You know how certain flavors just taste expensive? Yeah. It was that kind of a meal. Shrimp or gazpacho as an appetizer; a salad; chicken, crab cakes, or lamb for a main course; and crème bruele for dessert.
After dinner there was the presentation of certificates to the graduates (because our diplomas will be mailed to us next month), and we, as a class, presented gifts to our professors. We decided to go with a gag gift and a serious gift for each.
Lynn taught a class on the federal bureaucracy, and we learned about the policy stream or how public policy is made. The truth is that no piece of legislation or public policy is made in exactly the same way, so one can only speak in generalities. One of the policy models we studied was by Kingdon, and it involved a trash can, policy primeval soup (what Jay endearingly called “raw sewage”), a number of streams flowing side by side that eventually couple or join, and a window through which the toxic waste must flow at the appropriate time. We got Lynn a bucket (to represent the trash can) and some water guns to represent the streams of policy making. You can see the horror on her face below as she realized that maybe we didn’t really get all that she’d tried to teach us.
Jeff’s favorite theory of decision making is a theory called rational choice. It came up frequently in class and was the foundational theory in many of the books we read. (We political scientists like to come up with theories as to why people make decisions, and there are a number of theories including rational choice, organizational behavior, and governmental behavior. I think the truth is that people just make decisions based on what they think is most important, which is why there are so many theories of decision making.) We got him a magic 8 ball to assist him for when he needs to make rational choices in the future.
Jim has been teaching at Georgetown for 33 years, and we are all grateful to have had him as the director of our program and professor. When one meets him, one can tell that he’s been a professor for a long time and that he’s a pretty darn good professor too. What one might not guess about him is that he once made an audition tape for the show Survivor. Our class heard the rumor and investigated. Turned out the rumor is true, though the tape has been lost forever, or at least that’s what Jim tells us. We got him a leopard print snuggie to help him show his wild side, yet keep him warm as he is stepping down as director of the program after us.
All this to say that the dinner was delightful, and the evening wasn’t over just yet. The graduation festivities continued into the early morning, but more on that in the next post.
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