insomnia-induced post

I was rather irresponsible today, but as is so often the case, I managed to get away with it. For my International Economics Seminar (which is the class I have every Monday night) I was supposed to read 3 journal articles and prepare a presentation on the second half of one of them (since the article is particularly long and dense he assigned it to two people). I read the entirity of the article from which I was presenting, but I didn't start writing my presentation until, oh, about an hour before class. I had taken reasonably good notes while reading, but nonetheless I was not particularly proud of the outline that I rather hastily created (most people in the class do their presentations in Powerpoint, but for some reason I've chosen to be old school: I write an outline of sorts in Word and print it out on overhead transparancies, which I then use in my presentation). Anyway, because I left things to the last minute, I ended up being a good 20 minutes late to class, and I hadn't read the two other articles that had been assigned. But Prof. IMF (he's a funny old French guy who used to be a big shot at the IMF and retired in San Francisco and now teaches at USF part time) seemed nonplussed by my lateness, it turns out we're not discussing the two articles I didn't read until next week, and my presentation seemed to be well-received despite its slipshod conception. My knowledge of international economics is just more advanced than most or all of my fellow class members (of whom there are only 5, all undergrads or first year graduate students; 2 of my fellow second year IDEC colleagues are auditing the class, and of course they're generally as knowledgable as I am, but they don't have to present journal articles). Furthermore, I appear to be just about the best public speaker in the class (again, not including the two auditors). The combination of these two facts makes it pretty easy to stand up there and sound like I really know what I'm talking about without too much effort (and I don't get nervous, which helps; in fact, as you know, I love the sound of my voice and would gladly present every week in lieu of listening to others' boring presentations). In many cases this is true: I do know what I'm talking about and I am doing a pretty good job synthesizing and explaining the material (this is, after all, pretty much the only thing I learned as a history major--I can't even remember what year WWII started). But it also means I can get away with a bit of bullshiting and eliding certain parts of an argument that I didn't quite follow or didn't bother to read carefully. A part of me feels guilty about this, but a part of me is okay with it, because to be honest, it's the only thing in economics I will ever be really good at (well, maybe I'll be okay at research, but not the econometrics that inevitably follow). My math skills, my ability to intuit theoretical models, my ability to recognize problems with data--all these things are adequate, but I'll never be really gifted at them. I'll never further the field of economics by introducing a groundbreaking new theoretical model or conducting a seminal empirical study with important implications; what I can hope for is that I can work competently within the field doing something that helps people, and that I can further the cause of economics by explaining it to other people and convincing them that it is interesting and relevant.

Well, for the second night in a row I'm up way too late (although tomorrow the things I have to do are less urgent and time-constrained, so I can afford to sleep in for a while). I know of several people, including myself, who have been having wicked bouts of insomnia lately. I'm probably the luckiest of all these people, because my schedule is so flexible so I can sleep until noon (or sometimes later) almost any day I'd like.

I fear this blog is taking a bad turn: I'm trumpeting my superiority over classmates and then whining about my very minor problems. I sometimes wonder if this blog should have some kind of purpose or agenda beyond babbling about my life; I'll have to work on that.

Oh, and I'm about a third of the way through A Confederacy of Dunces. I hesitate to use the word "enjoy", because the main character is really the most obnoxious human being ever conceived (next to him, my dear, well-meaning and hard-working brother is the friendliest, calmest, most selfless and socially adjusted person in the world--I now deeply regret ever comparing him to the character in the book). I find the characeter massively infuriating, but he certainly has that train-wreck quality that you can't avert your eyes from. And the way that the supporting characters have webbed out from the main character into their own subplots, and I suspect will come back around to some sort of collision with him, is very promising.

But at the moment, I'm going to put myself to sleep with The Economist, which ran a survey of the developing world a couple weeks ago that I still haven't quite finished.