the last two weeks

The problem with blogging, as I practice it, is that when I actually do something interesting, I don't have time to write about it, so I only post regularly when I'm watching paint peel or reading about the NAIRU. The nearly two weeks since my last post, however, have been a good bit more interesting.

I took my Macro Midterm, and I have reason to believe it went pretty well. There was half of one question that I had to sort of bullshit, so I don't think I aced it. The last question had me panicked, because it was a proof that I didn't know how to do. I had to prove that the slopes of two things were the same, but if I took the derivative (the way you find something's slope) I wasn't getting a useful answer, and if I did a series of substitutions to get the variables that I needed into the equation, I ended up losing the thing I needed to derive with respect to. So after scrawling out a desperate and aimless page of related math and graphs, I finally figured out that if I did one substitution, took the derivative, and then did the other substitution, then I'd get what appeared to be the right answer. A lot of work for what ended up being four lines long, but it's nice to be able to successfully derive a proof (even a very simple one).

I spent March 8th through 15th in D.C. (or, more specifically, at the Days Inn in Alexandria, with daily adventures into D.C.). H and JSOC were my travel companions on what could possibly have been my last Spring Break, and we generally had a very good time. We saw the usual monuments and buildings, I saw the awesome Jasper Johns exhibit (as well as a lot of other good art) at the National Gallery, and we did two cool things that I hadn't done on my previous trip to D.C.: the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and the International Spy Museum, both of which I really enjoyed. I'm not very interested in either air (well, except what I breathe) or space, but I have to admit that it's cool to touch a moonrock or see the amazingly tiny Apollo 11 shuttle that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldren, and Michael Collins (the one that stayed on the shuttle...not to be confused with the Irish freedom fighter played by Liam Neeson in the movie of the same name) home from the moon. It was also cool to see a U2 spy plane like the one that took the surveillance photos that led to the Cuban missile crisis. And at the spy museum, there was this thing where you could test yourself to see how good of a spy you'd be, and I aced it (this, of course, was based simply on being able to remember details of my fake like and to make up new, plausible details on the spot...the computer kiosk couldn't tell obvious I am when I try to lie in real life).

So, D.C. was a lot of fun, and we got to spend some time with E, who has an intership at the State department. I also spent a big chunk of time while we were in D.C. getting work done and worrying about the Pacific Development Conference, but let's see a few pictures before I get into that.

Yes, that's my finger. I'm quite juvenile.

This is part of the new World War II Memorial. It was fairly conventional, but it did evoke some vague sense of international unity, along with the important respect for and gratitude toward the dead. I liked it.

A part of the WWII memorial close to my own heart. It was dusk when we visited these memorials, and the fading light and skeletal trees and greyness were all really lovely.

Here is E standing in front of the State Department building where he works. Doesn't he look handsome and professional? My little boy is all grown up!

And here are my other two boys, not being particularly grown up.

The giant Caulder mobile in the atrium of the National Gallery's modern wing.

A smaller Caulder (actually two of them) that I found out later I wasn't supposed to be photographing. Aren't the shadows awesome?

So, as I mentioned, the PacDev conference was two days after we returned, so I spent a lot of time working on my regressions and my powerpoint presentation while we were there (I also managed to read and summarize two macro articles...possibly the most productive I've ever been on a vacation). Then, after we got back, my advisor called me on early Friday afternoon to tell me about a bunch of changes and additions he wanted me to make (in his defense, I should have called him earlier in the week, but in my defense, he could have made his expectations clearer sooner...he's been throwing huge quantities of occasionally-contradictory information at me all semester, and I'm doing the best I can to record, absorb, and implement it all). I never got the data that I needed from the MFI, so I halfway faked it with data that I do have, and then, at my advisor's suggestion, I faked it the rest of the way with more data that I have. The first part of that took a while (well, just one very long late night in D.C.) but the rest of it I was able to do in a few hours on Friday. So I generated the new variables that I needed, I added the new regressions that he wanted, and I revised my presentation again. I had to go pick up the rental car (the conference was in Davis) on Friday night, I had to practice the presentation and make sure it wasn't too long, and I had to be all nervous and panicky, so I only got about 3 hours of sleep that night.

It didn't matter, though, because my nervousness kept me awake on Saturday morning, and I think my presentation ended up going pretty well. My advisor (and my other two professors that were there) said I did a really good job, as did my classmates (of course, what else would they say?). I know I sounded nervous and I spoke a little quickly, but I generally managed to be articulate and clear, I stayed within my 15 minute time limit, and I sounded more or less like I knew what I was talking about. And it was all over by 9 a.m., so I was able to relax for the rest of the day and enjoy the other presentations. The other IDEC students that presented (H, JSOC, and a girl named C that I'm buddies with) also did a good job--nervous but articulate and knowledgable--and they all had presentations that were, in my opinion, more interesting than mine.

Which actually brings me to a minor revelation I had on Saturday, which is that I'm not sure if I'm really that excited about microfinance, and I'm certainly not all that excited about my specific thesis topic. I'm not sure what I am excited about anymore. I still really love development economics, but the uncertainty about what I'm going to do after I graduate is sort of snowballing at this point, and I'm not really sure about anything. I'm aggravated with DWE, not so much for always being out of town, but for never quite knowing where he's going to be or when or for how long. He's probably going to be back in SF on Tuesday, but he doesn't know when he's leaving again, and it could be right away. And when he leaves, he doesn't know where he's going. The only thing I know for sure is that when he does get back he'll be tired, and I'll have class. I'm sure we'll have a great time.

But then again, I just found out that he scored 20 points higher than me on the SAT, which is annoying because he beat me, but otherwise an extremely attractive quality (yes, I know how demented I am). Except for his schedule, I really adore him. He seems to think that I'm eventually going to get sick of his travelling and break up with him, and I keep telling him that it's not going to happen, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe he's right.