I'm in Taiwan right now because I had to show up for the opening of an exhibit which involves my mom's family at the national 228 museum. I've only been here for a week, and I've realized that I desperately need to relearn (really, learn) Chinese. If my department will allow it and not frown upon it, I am going to take a class in it at UCLA. Hopefully it's not too late for my brain to learn something linguistic.
In Taiwan, I feel really at ease. It's probably because I am not working here and I don't have to pay rent or cook for myself in the kitchen and take out the trash when the trash trucks come playing Fur Elise or really worry about life stuff while I'm here with my mom's extended family, but I really like it here. Assuming my Chinese is passable by the time I enter the job market, I will consider searching for a job here. A UCLA alum from last year apparently got placed at National Taiwan University, which is pretty cool and indicates that it is possible if I work really hard.
I passed both of my second-year fields so things are looking pretty good on the grad school front. Right now, I'm preparing for my advancement to candidacy (ATC) presentation that I need to give when I go back to UCLA to formally transition to being a Ph.D. candidate. Thankfully, VPN will allow me to access all the journals I need access to so I can hopefully get it done in the next few days.
In July, I moved to a new apartment with a friend in my program, Allen. Moving everything from our apartments using a U-Haul truck to the new one was quite tiring, but it worked out in the end.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
no longer a bachelor....... of economics.
My Master's of Arts in Economics was conferred to me via a very impersonal e-mail. It didn't even say that my degree was in economics; it simply said that my "MASTER OF ART" degree was conferred. I guess whoever programmed the script left an pretty important field out. But at least it read "GO BRUINS!" at the end.
I'm set on studying Industrial Organization and Econometrics as my two fields. I'm already swamped with work, but at least I'm not as disgruntled about it as I was a year ago. I'm almost done with my paper for a class from last quarter (which is already more than 3 weeks late) and I have a bunch of problem sets to do this week for econometrics. Tomorrow I'm giving a short homework presentation estimation with lagged variables with Miao, but the problem is my code doesn't seem to exhibit the results that the professor wanted, and it's already 12:50 a.m.
I'm a teaching assistant for ECON101, which is the last course in the undergrad microeconomics sequence. Formally, it's called Microeconomic Theory, and it serves mostly as an introduction to game theory. I must say that the undergrads here are receiving a much stronger undergraduate education in economics than I did at my alma mater. The stuff my students are learning now was taught mostly in my upper division Game Theory course back at Maryland. I'm optimistic about it though, since I've heard that it has been going the whole nine yards in terms of revamping the undergrad program, making it much more math-intensive. Anyway, I really enjoy being a TA for the class because at this level, the students are mostly econ or business econ majors and want to really learn the stuff.
I'm set on studying Industrial Organization and Econometrics as my two fields. I'm already swamped with work, but at least I'm not as disgruntled about it as I was a year ago. I'm almost done with my paper for a class from last quarter (which is already more than 3 weeks late) and I have a bunch of problem sets to do this week for econometrics. Tomorrow I'm giving a short homework presentation estimation with lagged variables with Miao, but the problem is my code doesn't seem to exhibit the results that the professor wanted, and it's already 12:50 a.m.
I'm a teaching assistant for ECON101, which is the last course in the undergrad microeconomics sequence. Formally, it's called Microeconomic Theory, and it serves mostly as an introduction to game theory. I must say that the undergrads here are receiving a much stronger undergraduate education in economics than I did at my alma mater. The stuff my students are learning now was taught mostly in my upper division Game Theory course back at Maryland. I'm optimistic about it though, since I've heard that it has been going the whole nine yards in terms of revamping the undergrad program, making it much more math-intensive. Anyway, I really enjoy being a TA for the class because at this level, the students are mostly econ or business econ majors and want to really learn the stuff.
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