I Hath Surely Stepped in it this Quarter

Sorry about the delay, I got legitimately busy for once after the quarter started. As a senior and an Econ major, my life in classes recently has been mainly reading articles and research reports and preparing to discuss them in class. On top of that, I have to work really hard for part of the quarter (or if I were smart, spread it out over the whole quarter) to study for tests and to write papers. But this quarter, I wound up in two of the econ classes that actually give regular homework. On top of that, my third class is also doing that. As a result, I've found myself doing pointless busywork with most of my free time since the quarter started. On top of that, it's tournament season for frisbee, so I have to be extra conscious about how much I can get done ahead of time. But enough complaining, I'll make a quick post here to talk about my classes.

Intermediate Microeconomics:
This is that one course where no matter who you talk to, it gets a groan and a negative response. Everyone thinks it's really hard and I have to agree. But I became an econ major after taking my first micro class, so I have high hopes for the class even though it's apparent I am behind on the math. I would have been doing better had I taken this course last year, but they couldn't fit me in then. Now, I'm taking it in my last quarter alongside the capstone course. Both of those classes are really giving me a lot of work. The math for micro is slowly coming back to me; it's been since 2009 Fall quarter that I did any math that was relevant to this subject, so it's fair to say I was more than a little rusty going in. The course is taught by my stats professor (the first professor I had at Seattle U, my last math teacher, and one of my two advisors at the school), so that's at least nice. I keep winding up in an early class when I'm with him, we're just destined not to sleep in I guess. This time though, I'm not falling asleep so much.

The Policy Process:
I was originally hoping my transcripts from abroad would come in on time which would allow me to only take two classes this quarter. Unfortunately they STILL haven't come in (a concern all of its own), so I was forced to keep this class. When registering, I didn't care what class I got because it was early February and I figured my transcripts would come in on time anyway. I wound up just going by the timeslot I wanted and filtered that for any philosophy or political science classes that fit and this was the only one. I didn't even know the title of the class until I walked in the room on the first day. The professor for this class looks like a student; he has a lip piercing, wears chains on his jeans, and is young enough that he is still finishing his doctorate. It's clear that he is still getting his bearings as a teacher, but he's a pretty nice guy nonetheless. This class is rather light on the actual problem-solving homework load (unlike the other two classes which assign large lists of problems to solve) and is instead very heavy on reading. In some ways, it's worse than the problem solving because I have to retain everything I read. But hopefully, this class shouldn't cause me too many problems this quarter and I can devote more time to my other two classes.

The History of Economic Thought:
This is my fun class and it's also going to be my hard class. It is the capstone course for econ majors which means it is the final course we get before we graduate. In lieu of having a huge final essay (which is what I thought we did), the class concludes with a 45 minute interview (per person) between the professor and one student at a time. He has said that other professors often like to come watch it happen, which means I will likely get anywhere from 1 through 4 of my old professors watching me get interviewed on the last 500 years of economic thought, seeing how I retain my knowledge. I'm sufficiently afraid of this final and I want to absolutely kill it, so most of my late-quarter time will be spent studying my ass off for this interview. Aside from that, this class is almost completely the same people (and we sit in the same places) as my markets class from last quarter, so there are cool people to talk to in it. On top of that, the professor is extremely funny and though he's scatterbrained, he's easy enough to learn from.

Frisbee:
We had our first tournament of the year (calendar, not school) and my first tournament in almost a year recently. We went to Ellensburg for CWU's tournament. Only 7 teams showed up, but it was still a pretty good time. I didn't get much play time as I wanted, but I got as much as I should have because I was still out of tournament form after missing so much practice time. It was no big deal though because we had over 2 full lines (I think there were about 16 people in total there). Our one grad student (law school) was talking all  Saturday about how he always wanted a Finafrock (terminology changed for my blog, but you know what I mean) and he was running out of tournaments to get it at since this is his last year in school (he finishes law school in May). The next day, I was running on the D1 line (our zone defense line which turned out to be super baller for some reason) and he wound up getting a Finafrock. The whole team ran up and partied with him after he got it. On the weekend, we wound up going 4-2, so not too bad, but room for improvement. We have sectionals coming up in a couple weeks, so we'll see how that goes. With our field gone, our practices have been limited in existence, so I haven't been able to get playing much. I hope it doesn't hurt my play coming up.

Other stuff:
Not much is going on otherwise. I've still been working along on League, trying to get to level 30 so I can do ranked teams with Eric, Steven, and Chris. That will be fun when it happens. I beat Mass Effect 3 the other day and was disappointed by the ending as was the rest of the internet it seems.

I'm actually going to try to get ahead on homework again since nobody is online for LoL at the moment, so until next post, peace out!