The sun is setting on the first day of week two of gradschool classes. Camaraderie has really started to flourish as we all pull each other up and up to finish the first week's set of four assignments - one per course: Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Math, and Econometrics. They have each been a struggle and pursuit, but - as we were told by our professors and some upper-level students - we have grown closer as a group. Several of us met at the university yesterday to go over questions to assignments and help each other understand different concepts, as well as comparing answers, etc., of course. Yesterday was therefore very productive - thank goodness! The weekend was definitely filled with a lot of gibberish math such as "epsilon-neighborhoods" and "metric spaces" and "there exists and epsilon such that..." as well as the abominable algebra of gammas and betas that made up the majority of our Macro assignment.
Then today we had a couple of classes, as usual, and then a five (out of 16~ish) of us got together in the computer lab to code and write up one of the answers to one of our assignment problems, as well as talk about more assignment problems... It was great - everyone is generally cheery and helpful and a genuinely lovely person... okay maybe not everyone... but a great percentage... Then there was a first-years' grad party at the grad club pub/lounge that I went to. I mingled with a number of 1st-year-grad-students from different faculties and departments. It was interesting, but I must admit I feel most at home with the like-minded nerds from the Econ department - even though they all come from different backgrounds too: math, physics, finance/MBAs,... We had this (stupid) icebreaker name where we were given the name of someone in the room and had to find that person and make a group with them. The game was poorly organized, though, because for every person we found we needed to find that person's person-to-find... they weren't closed groups, is what I'm trying to say. So once we had about five people in a group we were supposed to sit down, but then no one was really sure who was first to have found their group, who was second, etc. It was really messy and we were supposed to be competing for whom could go serve themselves from the buffet first, but people just stopped listening to the MC and went to serve themselves, myself included.
The entertainment was strangely selected. It was a beautiful girl who came from who knows where to sing two arias while we were having dinner. She sang the Habanera from Bizet's "Carmen" and Mozart's famous Figaro aria, "Voi che sapete." It was the oddest setting in which to hold such a classic and elegant performance. The guy in my group sitting across the table from me was laughing (I'm not sure if it was at the operatic performance or - more probable - at the juxtaposition of her voice with the our noisy, pub-like behaviour. A lot of people could not care less that she was singing or that she wasn't using a microphone. They kept chatting and drowning her out. She was a good singer, too. I felt for her, and I spited the unappreciative, disrespectful crowd of graduate students. You'd think since we are striving for a higher level of education we'd be more sensitive to finer things in life, but apparently rowdy socializing is more important...
Anyhow, now I'm home and I need to finish my math assignment. That is my update for tonight.
Oh! And in case you were wondering, the title today are a part of the lyrics from Mozart's Aria that the girl sang. They mean, "I'll tell you what I'm feeling, It is for me something new..."
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