I really do like being in school

Just glanced over my last few entries and noticed that I only write when I am frustrated about something.  So I want to say for the record: I love being back in school! My classes are interesting and fun, I am meeting lovely people, and except for the occasional swine flu, living alone is not bad. Someday will manage to write about all of the good things going on. Besides the brownies (which really are very, very good, as it turns out).

test prep

I have my first exam of grad school tomorrow.

I just spent the last forty-five minutes making brownies.

I have to wake up in… eight hours? Ish. I was hoping that baking + doing dishes would relax me and get me ready to fall asleep, but I am just as hyper as before, possibly more. On the plus side, my apartment smells really good.

It has been a long time since I’ve taken a test like this (involving math, and formulas, and possibly a calculator). I am nervous not because I don’t think I am prepared – I understand the concepts, as far as we have gone over them multiple times in class and in the book – I am nervous because every time I try to do problems stemming from the concepts I trip up on some silly step along the way, usually involving algebra. I am not detail oriented. We have been assured that partial credit will be given if it’s clear we knew how to do it, but as the whole “exam” concept is a recipe for big, scary stress, this doesn’t help very much.

What a boring post. Time to stuff my mouth with brownies; that has to be better than whinging.

EDIT: Used this recipe as I did not have any baking chocolate in the house. Quite good!

on paper-writing and school nights

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.

first day of school

Note: this post is slightly delayed since I still do not have internet in my apartment – it was written on the night of the 26th.

Today was the official beginning of my graduate career.  I woke up at 6:30, hauled myself out of bed, and was sitting in Microeconomics by 8 am, if not ready to learn, at least with my eyes open.  It was a good day; both professors I had today were smart and engaging, I did not feel too lost, it was sunny and I lay in the grass for about ten minutes after lunch.
My favorite thing that has happened today, however, is reading the second chapter of one of my two (two!) giant Microeconomics textbooks.  Yes, I was not expecting this either.

The textbook to which I am referring was written by Lee Friedman, a professor here (Friedman also teaches next semester’s more advanced Micro class).  My current professor described this book (from the outside, your standard 700+ page textbook) as “more literary.”  (As opposed to the other textbook, which upon casual perusal appears to have lots of math.)

The first chapter of Friedman’s book was pretty straightforward: what is the role of a policy analyst, why is microeconomic analysis important for a policy analyst to know, what are its limitations, etc.  The second chapter opened in a similar vein, but then it had a story.  Not just any story.  This story was about a young woman named Barbara Blackstone starting her Very! First! Day! at public policy grad school.  She woke up at 6:45 am!  She wanted to do good in the world but needed more tools to know how!

The real fun begins when Barbara goes to class and her gentle-eyed professor gives a lecture on supply and demand curves (not terribly dissimilar from the one I heard earlier today).  I can’t decide which I find more delightful: the internal nervous dialogue of the students (it does not sound like that inside my head!) or the fact that Professor Friedman likes his opening lecture so much he felt the need to give it to us inside a textbook, complete with fake student questions and interjections.  Though honestly, nothing can beat the end of the story, which I copy in full below:

Professor Weiss went on to show [some math about cost-benefit analysis] and then announced that this was quite enough for one day and ended the class.  Barbara and Reggie looked at each other, tired but smiling.

“That was some class, wasn’t it?” said Reggie.

“You can say that again,” Barbara replied.  “I think this course is going to be very interesting.  I just hope I can keep up with it.  At times it seemed to be going too fast for me.  I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Reggie grinned at her.  “It sounded to me like you’re going to do just fine.”

Professor Weiss, who overheard the thrust of this conversation, smiled to himself as he left the room.  They both will do just fine, he thought.  This whole class will do just fine.  I am lucky to have such good students.  And with those private thoughts, he disappeared from view.

I solemnly swear to utter the words, “That was some class,” at least once a day every day for the next two years.

rarefied

Today in math camp, the professor made a joke about conservative economists and people who can’t stop fighting the Cold War, and everybody laughed. I laughed too, delighted with the joke and with the fact that everyone else around me got it, but thinking back on it I feel more hesitant. Yes, we (incoming students at the Goldman School of Public Policy) all get it. We are smart and engaged and informed.

I have two vying reactions to this fact.  The first is: how wonderful! It’s a blessing to be surrounded by people like this, and scary to not be anywhere close to the smartest person in the room. The second is: how unreal. I am back in academia, that most rarefied of atmospheres.

To illustrate this problem, let’s take the current furor over health care reform. The Goldman School focuses on real world problems (and in fact the joke was about how classical microeconomics ignores real world problems) but it is still full up with highly educated, highly motivated people, most of who (whom?) cannot understand the first thing about why people are at town halls screaming about “death panels.”  I’ve had several conversations with fellow students where we both put on confused expressions and say, “I just don’t understand what these people are thinking.” We don’t get it; we know too much to understand or empathize with ignorance.  Again: good thing! I want policymakers to know a lot.  But also: bad thing! I also want policymakers who can educate and convince people who don’t know a lot.

halfway everywhere

I am half in grad school now. More specifically: I am in math camp. Math camp started on Monday, but I missed the first three days, while I was traveling. Luckily the first three days were easy to make up on my own: all I needed to do was remind myself of things I learned long ago. Today was a little like that too, except someone else was reminding me.

Doing problem sets last night I remembered both what I liked and what I disliked about math. I like when it is clean and easy, when equations click together just the right way, and you find a solution you can circle and check off. I do not like when it is complicated, and messy, when I have to fill line after line with brute force, adding this, multiplying by this, forcing it into the right shape. The tediousness of algebra takes away the joy of an answer that is simply right, and usually leads to some equally nasty solution, a terrible fraction that introduces a note of doubt into what should be a clean process.

This will probably be the cleanest process of my year though, messy fractions and all. I should enjoy it while I have it. I should wallow in circle-able solutions.

In the realm of Life, I am also halfway to somewhere. I slept in my Berkeley apartment for the first time last night (a friend stayed with me to allay my nerves about being all alone). I am moved in but furniture-less. I am haunting craigslist, waiting for my bed to come. I am checking items off my to-do list: entrance loan counseling, grocery shopping.

nostalgia for the present

I’m moving to Berkeley in a month.  Berkeley and San Francisco are next door neighbors, but living next door is not the same as living in your very own lovely laughter-filled house.  I am going to leave mine, which I moved into so recently (six months, just).  Yesterday we had friends over to eat “gay cake” (rainbow-frosted) in celebration of Pride and warmth.  We sat around in the backyard drinking homemade mint lemonade and mimosas and eating food and talking and laughing.  At some point a guitar was brought and put to use.  The remnants of the party decided to make dinner, and we sat 10 people down for a feast just because we were all there and did not want to leave.  I tied an apron on to cook, and my friends in the dining room made up blues verses about each of us.  At dinner we argued and laughed and drank wine.  After dinner we cleaned up, crawled into bed.  My roommates came in to kiss me goodnight and gossip.  It was a glorious day.  

I won’t have a lot of days like that when fall hits.  There will be good moments, I am sure, and I know I will come back to my friends in the city.  But as a student, weekends are no longer enormous blocks of leisure time.  I will have to measure and worry and trade-off time.  It’s worth it; I am excited to do it; but days like yesterday remind me of what I’ll be missing for the next two years.

This is brought to the forefront of my mind due to the true beginning of my apartment search in Berkeley.  I went on Saturday and looked at three apartments, two of which were uninhabitable (one tiny, one too crowded by the residents of the adjoining house) and the third of which I would have to pay an extra half a month of rent for.  More will come, I know, but I am in the anxious stage now, where I don’t know where I will be in a month, I don’t know if this move will be an upgrade or a downgrade, and I am already nostalgic for the life I haven’t left yet.

It’s a new world

Dear blog,

I decided to give you a ridiculously long name full of a lot of “p” words.  Why “p” you may ask?  Well, it starts both “public” and “policy” which are the two words that make up the name of the discipline I will soon be studying.  Other good words that start with “p” that I did not use include: picnic, post, pillory, puntilious, pugilistic, and plucky.

As you may have guessed, the creation of this new name signals other changes.  First of all, I’m going to try and write in you.  I know that sounds dirty, but I think it will be a good thing.  Second, since I am no longer campaigning, I am not going to be writing about the Obama campaign anymore.  Instead, I will try to focus on the experience of being a graduate student.  I will also be cross-posting wonky policy stuff with a blog run by students at the program I will be attending (the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, known hereafter as GSPP).  I may also be entertaining a request from a dear friend to include a serial novel.  However, I make no promises on that front; that may be beyond my powers at this time.

Love,

Felicity