Teaching an Old Blog New Tricks

Sooner rather than later – in a little less than a month that is, this blog will be “revamped” as a pseudo-travel-blog as I journey to Kakamega, Kenya to work as an intern for the Foundation for Sustainable Development for three months. I hope to write some impressions, ideas, and insights as to what living without running water is like… yay!

So far this experience has involved 6 immunizations in 2 days, 2 travel consults (and one to come!), a phone call from Kenya, countless paperwork and research, and the experience of finding enough culturally appropriate skirts to last me for a while. More to come …

 

2 weeks and too many pages left…

Graduation in t-12 days.

Thesis needing to be sent to professors for first edits and read-throughs in t-12 hours. (Currently, I have 8 pages written. It’s gonna be short)

Final undergraduate presentation on Thursday (I’ve also got one on Tuesday and Wednesday).

I’m trying to make sure I get everything done before I run out of …”care” — I think I’ve got about 10 hours of care stored up. Goodness I hope it’s enough to make it through.

On a happier note, I ran 20 miles last week. Yep, I ran more miles than I wrote pages on my thesis. Sad or simply psychotic?

 

Graduate School Options

I’ve narrowed it down to 10 – need to drop another 3 before the applications start getting done. Thankfully, most of the applications aren’t due until after the New Year. I’m looking at a PhD in development economics or public policy and development economics. Here’s the list as it stands now:

 

 

Johns Hopkins – SAIS

Berkeley

George Mason

Georgetown

Columbia

Oxford

University

NYU

University of West VA

UNC Chapel Hill

Vanderbilt

 

Articles to Read

The recent issue of The Economist has some good articles:

Sex and Pharmaceuticals — how Pfizer is trying to up its market share by developing a Viagra-like drug for women

Monsanto: The Parable of the Sower — Debate between whether or not genetically modified seed research company (Monsanto) is “good” or bad”

Less Poor, Less Free — how the new Zambian president (Banda) is chumming up to Chiluba (Former Zambian President) who was recently acquitted of embezzling $95 million in public funds

Sierra Leone’s Corruption — progress in taming corruption?

Congo’s Constitution — The tag line of this one is just ridiculous: “Is Congo’s Joseph Kabila flirting with Dictatorship?” Flirting? Really? You have to ask?

 

 

Mmm… Tasty, Tasty Food

In honor of the large amounts of traveling that I have been/will be doing over the week, I found this delectable fast food flow chart.For all your greasy dining needs:

Fast Food Flow Chart

 

SEA Conference

Day Two of SEA Conference is here. Yesterday was interesting – some really good panels attending – some really BAD panels attended. Here’s a note, if presenting at a conference in English, best to actually speak English.

Best Papers: Tyler’s on Congressional Franking, Russian guy on using car ownership to investigate corruption, Paper using surveys from ABC etc to determine the public’s view of the economy

Worst Papers: THE GIRL WHO SAID THE RESOURCE CURSE DOESN’T EXIST. Just because she said so. There have been a lot of other either bad papers (confusing or uninteresting), but I wasn’t paying enough attention to remember what they were about.

Presenting tomorrow at 8 am.

 

Tyler Presenting this morning

 

I’m on a plane!

And there’s wireless internet for free. I love technology advancements! And you know what provides technology advancements? THE MARKET.