Tying up loose ends May 29, 2008

I guess you could call me a planner. That’s my personality. That’s how I got this far, and it seems to be working for me. But some might find it vaguely amusing that I have more than three months before the first day of school, and almost three months before I move to Denver, and I have already a) rented my Seattle place out for the school year, and b) found an apartment in Denver that I’m ready to put a deposit down on. I like having things figured out, though…I like that certainty. That’s always been the problem with me with dating, because in order to be good at dating you have to let go and let things get figured out in time, and for me it’s either black or white. I know it’s right, or I know it’s wrong and there is no reason to go on. 

Now the summer is all about making and saving money for the fall, continuing to improve my credit score for the graduate plus loans, finishing my undergraduate thesis and graduate pre-requisite classes, studying, reading, and absorbing as much information as possible, and then spending time with my friends and enjoying the beautiful Seattle summer. What’s on the menu for non-work, non-school activities? Sailing on the new boat, golfing with Jonathan, reading in the park, and the quintessential summer barbecues that seem to happen almost every weekend.

This should be fun.

May Days May 20, 2008

I can’t believe it’s still May.

Don’t get me wrong- I am excited to have the summer in Seattle, and I hope to able to spend the summer in Seattle each year while I am in school.  But I am so very excited to be sitting in my seat on the first day of classes, and to know what it is like to truly be a graduate student, to be in Denver, to give my all to what I am learning and contributing.  This is, however, what life is…not to be trite, but it isn’t each milestone that I should be yearning for solely.  I should also be savoring each step that I have to take to get there.  I have the big one out of the way, since I know that my goals are not only reachable, but barring some major mistake, almost inevitable.  I now have no questions about my ability to go all the way to a PhD, and believe me, that seemed like a complete pipe dream not too long ago.  Now I can just enjoy the summer, and writing my thesis, and preparing myself for fall.  There is so much going on this summer that has nothing to do with school, and although at times it is difficult to pull my head out of the clouds and deal with everyday life, it is so breathtakingly beautiful right now that I have a moral responsibility to truly experience every moment of it.  

Things are hard in Russia sometimes. May 20, 2008

Fall class descriptions May 20, 2008

Statistical Methods I

An introductory course featuring statistical reasoning, probablity, sampling, statistical inference, nominal and ordinal measures of association, and correlation.

 

Economic Development

Deals with financial and economic problems faced by developing societies. 

 

International Political Economy

The course examines 3 contrasting visions of international political economy: economic security, trade and finance.

 

Rich States, Poor States

Why are some nations rich and others poor? In the early 19th century, the economic gap between Switzerland and Mozambique was 4 to 1 and now it is 400 to 1. Are what we like to call developing countries really developing or being left further and further behind? This course looks at a variety of variables to explain this disturbing situation. We examine culture, religion, invention, geography, disease, imperialism, values, and political systems in an attempt to answer this timely question. 

 

Political Economy of Human Rights

What does one mean by human rights? What can be the political economy of such rights? These are the two central questions that we will explore in this course. The goal is to understand the underlying social, political and economic processes that led in an evolutionary sense to the present human rights discourse. The nature and implications of economic rights will be given special attention. In particular, the implications of such rights for human wellbeing in both advanced capitalist and developing economies will be studied. The social capabilities approach to rights developed by Amartya Sen and others will be extended to the understanding of human rights.

 

Very tentative fall schedule May 20, 2008

And yes, this means (if I get these classes) that I will have Monday and Friday free! It ALSO means, however, that I will be taking 25 credit hours, and I’m not sure how functional that is in reality. I won’t be working very much or at all (if I can help it), so maybe it’s doable. I’m curious if any grad students out there have advice about class load? Can I drop classes if I need to or is that too undergraduatesque?