My first week of classes is over, and I already feel like I’m on a treadmill sloping between distress and upheaval! My classes:
- Microeconomic Analysis I:
- Taught by an excellent academic economist who assumes we already know everything. Apparently economics is all about “intuition” into a class of functions with essentially no relation to the world.
- Econometrics I:
- The study of finding relationship, which could be quite useful, but apparently first we go through a semester or two of probability and statistics. we take this class and micro with the Economic PhDs.
- Environmental Science:
- A class we take with the SIPA masters students, taught by one of the heads of our program. Looks like it will be fun, but I might need to go deeper on my own to get more than a gist out of it.
- Sustainable Development Seminar:
- The big opportunity for everyone in our program to get together and present on their multivarious research.
- Semeiotic Anthropology I:
- The elective I squeezed in, so it’s not all work and no play. The professor seems fantastic– he uses the class as a placeholder for whatever he’s interested, which this semester is neighbors and psychological makeups.
I have a deep distaste for economics, but I’ve decided that I need to take a “Love the one you’re with, and have an affair on the side” attitude if I’m going to stay happy. The affair is Semeiotics, which the folk in my program advised against me taking, but I think it’s going to be worth it. I might post some of the two-page reading-response papers for it here, if they seem interesting.
My undertakings for the season are split into “daily” tasks and projects, and I have five of each (I select new projects each season, and typically organize them into groups to remember them). Daily, I want to Exercise, do Research (floods in Pakistan!), work on my Social Circle, explore Prayer, and Read & Write. My projects are exploring New York, Cataloging my papers, an Alternative Economics Study Group, the Open Model for Citizen Engagement, and some Artificial Intelligence.
All told, I should be exceedingly busy. But what’s a stipend for?