It’s Sunday afternoon and my mind is all fogged up from too-much-dancing-and-not-enough-sleeping last night (I apparently have yet to learn that the grad student’s weekend is not the same as the working person’s weekend, and act accordingly). I am supposed to be writing my first paper, a four page memo recommending a political strategy to an Oregon governor from the early 1990s. Instead, I am procrastinating. Ah yes, the last three weeks of doing my homework three days ahead of time have now given way to the reality of avoidance-at-all-cost. (This is hyperbole. My paper is not due until Thursday. And to be perfectly frank, I don’t even have the write the paper for Thursday. I could write another paper next week, or another paper the week after that. So my self-portrait of a procrastinating student is somewhat misleading.)
So what has public policy grad school been like so far? I have learned a lot of things I do not entirely believe about the rational behavior of individuals in a market setting. I have spent a lot of time on my couch (reading). I have started to make friends. (My little sister just started middle school, which is similar, I think, to starting graduate school. At the end of her first week she said, “I have one friend, and everyone else is just an acquaintance.” I think I have two, maybe three, at the end of three weeks. Can we extrapolate a rate from our sample of two? Is the rate of friend-making a straight line, or does it eventually become asymptotic to some physical limit of human friendship?)
Consider for a moment, how scattered this blog entry is, and then imagine me trying to write a very structured, very concise memo about anything. No more dancing for me (though it was fabulous, the gay boys and the girls in short dresses and the drag queens, and the music, and everyone having such a good time). Every night is a school night now.
