The past two weeks have simply been a warm up to the real deal. Today began the first day of graduate school at the LSE. It was, well, exhausting. The LSE is after all a city and an European school. There is not acres of green fields to spread out, and it feels that there are simply students in herds at every turn. Last week’s party was at “the Quad”, which actually refers to the enclosed indoor space that connects a few of the buildings. In the U.S., the Quad usually means a big massive area of green grass with buildings surrounding four sides.
Anyway, the London Tube Strike took place again today, leaving a lot of students new to London very confused and frustrated trying to get to their first day of class on time. You take away a major means of transport in a city of 7.5 million people can only lead to one result – total chaos. Even though the bus still runs, I didn’t even attempt the madness during rush hour time. Instead, I walked. 50 minute and a serious workout later, I got to class early with 10 minutes to spare. The walk along River Thames is less charming when you are booking it with a big school bag!
I spent my afternoon in the Library, and that place was pure insanity. It was the first day of school and you would’ve thought it was exam time by the amount of traffic and the intentness of people studying. This place makes my undergraduate alma mater look like pre-school. Let’s hope it’s just the first-day excitement and everyone is still very motivated, because I can’t take that level of madness at the library all year!
Today begins the first day of always feeling behind on my reading. The professors even tell you that there is no way you can read it all, so read strategically. Tell me that’s not torture. And in case you are really curious, these are the units that I will be expanding my minds in this coming year:
- Development Policy and Management
- Micro and Macro Economics (for Public Policy)
- Quantitative Approaches and Policy Analysis
- Political Science and Public Policy
- Regulation of Financial Markets
In addition to those wildly exciting courses, I’ll be taking an advanced French and a fast-track intro Spanish certificate course. I gotta uphold the polyglot name somehow!
Hey, I was checking my old blogroll and found my way again to your Peace Corps blog, and thus here! How's London? I'm actually incredibly jealous of your class list– they sound fascinating! Well, maybe not the regulation of markets, but the rest do. ^_^ I'm planning to do an IR masters in a few years. Just curiously, how much econ did you need to apply to LSE?
Good luck, and hello from Poland!