1 semester down, 9 to go

With the completion of my econometrics final on Thursday morning, I have finished my first semester of graduate school here at Princeton. It's been a pretty intense semester, and by all accounts, next semester is more of the same if not even harder. But I like being pushed - I really feel like I've learned a lot in these past few months and it's been very fulfilling to gain so much from all the hard work put in. Of course, my entire perspective may change when I see my grades, but even so, I have learned a lot.

I don't know about you, but I know that I have several songs which run in my internal playlist for when I accomplish something big like finishing a semester or turning in a major assignment. Usually the songs are sports themes from ESPN, actually. But listen to this and try telling me there's a better song to play in your head just after you've finished something very difficult:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgLIoOojHkc&feature=related

Almost there...Well, not really

I love reading many of my friends blog posts and facebook messages at this season that go like this:

"DONE!"
"I've finished my first semester at graduate school! Hooray!"
"One more test... almost free..."

I get really excited and start to post one of my own, and then I remember...

My semester still has 6 more weeks.

Now some of you may think this is a bad thing, having finals after Christmas break (and as I hear it, Princeton is the only university who still does this), but I think it's ingenious. You see, finals start January 13, so we have nearly 4 weeks off to simultaneously relax and review the material for our tests. Some might say they wouldn't remember anything after Christmas, but in Grad School - that's pretty hard to do given it's all you've done all day for the past 3 months. So it's a win-win. Except for the whole not actually done yet bit.

But we did have a fun holiday skit party tonight. Allow me to apologize in advance for the sense of humor I will be losing in the next 4 years of life as a graduate student - judging by the humor of the increasingly older graduate students, the future seems bleak on this front. The faculty skit was funny... but in a nerdy sort of way. Sigh. But it's what I signed up for, right? And who am I kidding? I've been a nerd from day 1!

Getting through the daily work

So I haven't posted for a little while because... well, it seems like every day follows the same routine. Rush out of bed at 8am, morning classes until 12 or so depending on the day, studying, afternoon precept sessions, more studying, studying some more, sleep. Really, I have been impressed at how much work there is to do in graduate school. It's very invigorating and exciting, albeit quite exhausting. This being said, I still take time to do other things, even when they would seem to interfere with studying. For example, I spent most of last weekend attending the General Conference of the Church and focusing on the messages delivered by the prophet, apostles and other leaders of the Church. A few weeks ago, I took off time to travel to New York to attend a worship session at the Temple there. Just Monday I traveled out to Pennsylvania to attend my Grandmother's funeral. And of course, I don't study on Sundays, I attend a weekly scripture study class and I take time every day to study the scriptures myself. Some might think that this would be hard to sustain with all the work I do. I know people who under pressure find it best to not attend Church or attend to other obligations until they finish their work. I respect their decisions. But I feel that I could not make it through my studies without the added strength, focus and help I get from focusing on things of a spiritual nature. I saw that this was true in my studies as an undergraduate - there was undoubtedly divine assistance given me in my classes and my studies. That hasn't changed with graduate school, even if the workload has increased. Don't get me wrong - I love my studies and I think they are very important. I just think that there are things more important than school, and I am not afraid to take time away from school to attend to these weightier matters. Every second I'm studying I'm working hard though, and I am sometimes behind my classmates in how far I am in completing my studies. But I have no doubt that I am better off in every regard for establishing my priorities this way.

5K Run

So today I ran my first official 5K and it went really well. Apparently, the Princeton 1st Ward here has run it together as a team for the past 4 years. This time we had 50 members participating in either the 1-mile fun run or the 5K Race. We all wore bright yellow Princeton 1st Ward T-Shirts, and overall we had a lot of fun. For a long time, I've been meaning to be more active at running, so when I heard the ward was going to do this, I committed to it and started training. I only had a month to train, but I still ran a 28:20 in the race. I'm really pleased with the outcome - I wanted to be under 30 minutes. But I used to be able to run a lot faster than that, so I'm looking into when the next 5K is happening in the area so I can beat my time. It's funny - after the race, there was tons and tons of food, amongst which was super greasy pizza. The pizza was good, yes, but that's not the first food I'd necessarily think of eating after a race. So after burning all those calories we put them all back on. But I'm excited to be getting into running and finding a way to stay in shape amidst all the busyness of school!

First Official Day

Well, today was our first official day of classes. It was really good, and nice to have one and a half hour long classes instead of three hour classes. But it is kind of weird, because one of our two classes today was simply the continuation of math camp. So I've really only had new class so far - microeconomic theory - and then we don't have classes tomorrow. Here I am, all ready to dive into the semester and get working, and after the first day, we have a three day weekend. Granted, we have assignments in both classes, but I'm almost yearning for more classroom time. Don't worry, I'm sure that will change very quickly.

Other than that, life goes on here at Princeton. One bit of exciting news, however, is that I'm getting ready to submit my first paper for publication. My undergraduate advisor/employer, Dr. Butler (or "Coach" as he prefers to be called), sent me back his revisions on my paper on casino and wages and says I should go ahead and submit it. I think he's overestimating the paper a little, given by the highly-ranked journals he thinks we should submit it to, but I'm just excited to submit something at all. The really neat thing, however, is that I'm the lead author on the paper, so it's exciting because I've done most of the work. We'll see how the submission process goes, but I'm just excited to start getting into the real world of research!

Diversity

So one of the great things about being a graduate student at Princeton is the cultural diversity we experience here. There are more international students in my incoming class than there are Americans. The breakdown is 8 Americans, 2 Canadians, 2 Argentinians, 1 Italian, 1 Israeli, 3 French, and 7 Chinese. That's not all. On my floor there are 8 guys. Only 6 have moved in, but of those six we have 1 American (me), 1 Canadian, 1 Russian, and 3 Chinese. There is an incredible diversity amongst graduate students in this regard. That being said, there have been endless humorous moments that have stemmed from... well... cultural differences, you could say. If they're not cultural differences, well, at least they illustrate the unique personalities I have all around every day. Here are just some highlights:

- I don't know what the reason is, but the 3 French students in Economics are all OBSESSED with Jay-Z. Like, incredibly obsessed. They having been talking all week about the Jay-Z concert online tonight. They set up their laptop in the projector room and watched it on the big screen tonight, and they've been inviting anyone and everyone to come watch it with them. And as they told us, "But it's not just Jay-Z, guys! Beyonce and lots of other famous musicians will be there!"

- One of the Chinese guys on my floor did his undergrad at Cambridge in the UK. That's right, the UK - I have not heard the word England or Britain once in the last 2 weeks. His english is pretty good, but there's still a significant Chinese accent. This accent is never more funny than when he leaves and tells me, "Cheers, mate!"

- I've been watching a fair amount of sports lately (including a great BYU win!) in the common rooms here, and usually someone will come in and sit down and watch with me. I find whenever I'm watching baseball, it seems to just attract numerous international students. My Argentinian friend Gaston seemed to pick up on the rules of baseball pretty quick, but my Indian friends had some trouble. Here's how the conversation went:
ME: So if the guy hits it over the fence, it's called a home run. He gets to go around all the bases and everyone else on the bases comes home too. So like that home-run just now, because there was a guy already on first base, the team scored -
INDIAN FRIEND (IF): Oh yes, they scored one run! Nice!
ME: No, well actually they scored two runs because there was a guy on first and the guy at the plate. So they scored two runs. And if there was a guy on second too, they'd -
IF: Score two runs! I get it - two guys on base, two runs.
ME: No, no. Three runs, not two runs.
IF: Three runs?
ME: Yes, there's the guy who hit the ball too.
IF: So many runs does he get?
ME: Just one - each player gets one run.
IF: So wait, you can only get one run for a home run?
ME: No, no, no. One run for each player - so with two guys on base, you get -
IF: Ah yes, four runs.
And so on. You get how it goes.

- And my Chinese classmates are hilarious. They all know that I speak Chinese, but sometimes they forget. Often times I'm told, "Um, yeah don't tell anyone about that." And they all think it's rip-roaring funny when I respond in Chinese. Hopefully not because I sound so bad. But my friend Cheng says my Chinese is better than some of my Chinese classmates. I don't know about that, but while we're on the subject of Cheng, this guy is the funniest guy in our class. He is very soft spoken, but he does the most random things and says the most sarcastic things too. We've been playing volleyball a lot as a class, and he started playing with us the other day. We tried to help him communicate on the court and also learn to call if the ball is going out. This backfired, as he started calling the name of whoever was hitting the ball at that moment. So if Judd is serving, Cheng calls out, "Jahdd!" just as Judd hits it. Then, he took to calling out, "Jahdd!" whenever anyone hit it. Then when the ball was hit right to the middle of the court, he repeatedly would yell out, "The ball is not out! The ball is not out!" Very funny. He also likes calling me "Vahm," as in vom Lehn. I've told him he can call me Christian, but he usually calls me "Vahm," not "Kreesjohn!"

Anyway, I don't know if those are funny to anyone else, but we all love it here. As a quick side note too, I may be behind the times, but if you haven't heard yet, there's this funny viral thing called Auto-tune the news on Youtube. Some of the ones are pretty wacky, but it's very clever. They basically use Auto-tune to make news anchors sing their reports. Check it out. This one is my favorite so far, but people also love the second one as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Psfn6iOfS8&feature=related

This site has all of them here:
http://www.autotunethenews.com/

Sundays and Problem Sets

Well, as to be expected, there are quite a few adjustments that are accompanying the start of graduate school and one of the big ones has to do with church on Sunday. Unlike many other areas around universities (like, all the ones I've lived in through the past three years), there is no church ward just for young singles. In my ward, there will probably be at most only 20 young singles, and that's a high estimate. That's not to say there aren't more in the surrounding areas, but it's a different experience to go to church with families. I've really enjoyed it thus far, but it is different not having so many single peers. And it does mean that once church is over, Sundays are wide open timewise, so I'm learning how to manage time on Sundays better. At least the one thing I don't worry about so much on Sunday is...

Problem Sets. Problem Sets. Problem Sets. Those are the three things on my mind the most during the week right now. OK, so maybe it isn't quite that bad, but there is a lot of work to be done... and the official semester hasn't even started yet! I have already worked on my current problem set 10 hours or so, and I've still got at least a third or more left of it. But such is the life of a first year Econ student. But as I always say, better busy than bored!