Okay, so here's the long-awaited writeup on the WSP. Please understand that I'm making up the structure for this as I go along, so the chances of it being coherent and readable are about 55%, +-35%.
Attached below is the course schedule for week 1. We were able to adhere to it about 90% of the time, which was very surprising considering that it was former .mil folks running the show. Anyway, I got to New Haven the night prior to the course start (It was really more like the morning of. Weather delay in Chicago made sure of that). @
Marauder06 was nice enough to wait around Hartford airport for the plane to come in. Once I arrived I checked in, got a room key along with swipe card (Most buildings have an RFID system for entering) and goofy nametag. I got to sleep around 3am, with festivities starting around 8 that morning.
First things first: We have to eat. We assembled in the courtyard of Saybrook college (The residential area where we would spend most of our days) and gaggled over to the Morse college cafeteria. It was during this time that I got to meet the eclectic bunch of goons who would make up our class for two weeks. There were a few guys intel guys (Including former Marine intel, like myself, and a guy who Marauder06 used to work with) some grunts, one former Ranger (who wore Ranger hats and t-shirts every day and would not let you forget that rangerrangerrangerranger) and a few others. We met the guy who runs the organization, Chris Howell, a Yale student and former Australian SOF guy who is an oddball but very charismatic.
Apparently, the course is loosely based around a curriculum that his brother (a Yale graduate) developed to get him prepared for the rigors of college work. To that end, he has recruited some of the best political science, economics, and history professors that the school has to offer, and brought them into the program. Folks like retired Professor Donald Kagan, considered the world's foremost authority on the Peloponnesian war, and Pulitzer-Prize winner John Gaddis. Chris has really assembled an all-star team of teachers to force-feed knowledge into our puny heads. And on occasion, it works! I'd also like to take a minute to talk about the volunteer staff that were brought along. All were current Yale students or graduates, and all were impeccable tutors. We even had two guys from the Yale football team on the staff, and you can bet that they were smarter than all of us! Chris even managed to smuggle in Ashley Townshend, who is a teacher at the University of Sydney and member of several defense-related thinktanks. He ran several group discussions as well as acting as tutor during our writing sessions.
So that's enough about the staff. Continuing on after breakfast, we were treated to an hour-long tour of the Yale campus which is, in a word, stunning. The neo-Gothic architecture of each and every building is really a sight to behold. I was a little disappointed to find out that most buildings, despite looking like something built Benedictine monks, were actually less than 100 years old and built by a crazy architect named James Gamble Rogers. The story goes that Rogers dug the old-style Gothic buildings so much that he added things like artificial weathering and smoke damage to make each building appear centuries old. But what an effect! Lunatic or not, the buildings are incredibly impressive and really make you feel like you're on a proper college campus. Mixed in with that are seemingly-unimpressive spaces like the Beinecke Rare Book Library. On the outside it seems like a regular post-mordernist weirdo cube thing. Inside is this:
Those golden walls you're looking at are actually very thin sheets of marble, which are slightly translucent and let in just enough light to give it that beautiful golden glow. It's really very stunning. Oh, and all those books you see in that central column are hundreds of years old. No big deal, really. We finished up our tour with a visit to old campus, which has several statues of prominent Yale alumni, including the statue of Nathan Hale, America's first (and lousiest) spy. Legend has it that the CIA negotiated with Yale for ownership of the statue for several years, and the school absolutely would not budge. So one moonless night, CIA ninjas scaled the campus walls and took a casting of the statue, and ended up making one of their own to put up in Langley. Further research shows that this may be an apocryphal story, but I happen to like it, so I'm sticking to that! Old Campus also has the REAL old Yale buildings (hence the name), including Connecticut Hall, built in 1752. This is the oldest building on campus, and in fact one of the oldest buildings in the state! I think it houses the philosophy department, or something equally worthless. I kid!
Anyway, that's all I care to write for now. Stay tuned for the next installment.
). I'll have a full AAR after I finish next week.
