The other white meat.

Wow. What an amazingly crappy week. So last Saturday-ish, I'm backing out (head turned completely, mirrors checked beforehand, and those of you who have driven with me know that I'm paranoid about driving backwards), and get backed into by another guy pulling out of another spot. I don't know how I didn't see him. He said he wasn't looking. I'll spare you my idiocy with wrangling with insurance companies, suffice it to say that my poor baby has been sitting in the parking lot for over a week now, with a two inch gash in the bumper. Luckily I don't need a new bumper, and it is getting fixed Monday morning.

Any other week, and this would have been small potatoes. Frustrating, but small potatoes.
Coupled with the Macro exam from hell, and the fact that one of my good friends (and study buddy) dropped out of the program, this week was a life threatening experience. All because of this exam, this damage to the bumper, and what I see as my own idiocy, life will cease, I'll flunk out of the program, my family will hate me, my friends will all forsake me, and I'll end up wandering Dallas or Kansas City, accosting old ladies for quarters by screaming "ANSWER YOUR TELEPHONE!"

As it turns out, the bumper will be fixed, and I got a B (with a mighty fine curve) on the exam. So... uh.. I guess it worked out. Just had a minor crisis/melt down for the week. I can't begin to describe how great it is to have my family there for me when these things happen. I'm usually pretty calm and rational, but when I freak out... I go waaaaaayyyyyyy out there, and it's good to have my parents and brother and sister who will give me a reality check.
It is also very nice to have a very cute little Ardilla around to remind that life still quite amazing and good.

Was at the Econometrics conference all day Saturday. Presentation after presentation of paper after paper about econometrics... that's enough statistics for one day, thank you. And then of course the lovely dialogue that went on outside during the lunch break.
Indian 2nd year student: So I hear one of you dropped?
Me: Yeah.
Indian 3rd year student: Which one?
Indian 1st year student: -----.
I2: Yeah, him.
I3: I thought it was -----.
I2: No no, THIS is ----.
I1: Yeah, the other white one.
I3: Oh. I couldn't tell.
Me: Uh... thanks guys. I know we all look alike, but could you at least notice that I had longer hair?
I3: Oh yeah...

Yes... Quijote... the other white meat.
I don't mind at all though. It's pretty funny actually. It's also funny that one of my Indian professor's thought I was him too.

Talked with one of the students here who I thought was one of the three Turks (prego, math, and elder -Turk, respectively), but turns out to be from Kuwait. She was just starting her research on stochastic processes, which sounded interesting. What was more interesting was the deal she had worked out for her scholarship. For every year that Kuwait University pays for her PhD, she teaches Economics back there. She's up to three or four now, and while she likes Dallas (or at least the lack of heat in Dallas as compared to Kuwait), she likes the deal better. It sounds good. Guaranteed job for at least five years out of the program, and you get your schooling paid for. Why can't I find a sweet deal like that? Wonder if Universidad de Chile or Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona are willing to pay for the rest of my grad program if I promise to teach there... hmmmmmm... somehow I doubt it.
But teaching seemed more appealing to me after this conference. I heard a lot of interesting conversations between the faculty members about various departments, university politics (i.e. BS), research stories, and student stories. I think the professor's here have a sweet deal. Small department, which is growing in rank and research, very little politics (at least from what I heard from a prof. who's worked here for over five years), and good relations with other programs like SUNY, LSU, Michigan, Columbia, Peking, Coppenhagen, etc.
One of the visiting professors (a very cool guy by the way) from SUNY has apparently been threatening to stay down here for the weather's sake. I doubt he will (he definitely seems like a New York guy), but it's still funny to hear. The thing that struck me most about this guy was how young he was. And then how good his graduate student from SUNY was. This grad student (we'll call him "Lucky" for the misprinted Chinese tatoo on his neck that was supposed to mean happiness, but as he later found out just meant "lucky"... so he went with it) presented an impressive mathematical paper on lifetime and fertility rates. It was an offshoot of his professor's earlier research, but it was pretty impressive and independent for grad student work. And at one point, to save time, he shows the first formula, and then the result through skipping the derivations. Well the Columbia prof. and the LSU prof. smelled blood in the water, and one of the results was not intuitive (they couldn't make sense of it without seeing the math).
"Wait wait wait," the LSU prof. interjected, "wouldn't it be better to take the integral of the ratios instead of the ratio of the integrals."
"Yeah I think you did something wrong in your calculations" the Columbia prof. (Chicago trained by the way) added.
Without skipping a beat, Lucky stares them both down and says in a deadpan voice. "No, because this is the correct result from the derivations" he then puts another transparency up to move on but the two would have nothing of it. They kept pushing that he was wrong, until finally he stops them both in mid-cacophony, "Look, my only mistake was not putting up the manipulations" and then on the spot he verbalizes pretty much what would be a two page proof, without sounding frustrated, without sounding annoyed, but more with the tone of an 8th grade math professor explaining why if 2 + x = 4 then you simply isolate the x and solve. And for the only time that day, the LSU and Columbia prof. were pretty much shut down. And where was his advising prof. during all this as his grad student was being grilled by much older, "wiser", professor's from established and well ranked programs? He was chuckling in the back for the rest of the presentation. I think those two had a beer after that one.
Another funny story about Lucky: he and his professor were in Belgium for a week or two as part of some research program or seminar. As Lucky tells it,
"yeah, D and I lived in the same apartment, and I was surprised to see my professor not even get up until 10 or 11. Whenever I tried to wake him, he just rolled over and said, 'anything before 10:30 is not important enough for me to get up.' So at night we'd walk the streets, enjoy the sights, and drink some beer. So each day we'd take turns on who went to the grocery store for beer. Well you can tell who's the econ prof. and who's just the student, because everyday I bought beer, I bought 6 euro quality, while his days he spent like, 2. When I talked to him about it he just said, 'eh it'll all even out.' Stupidly enough I believed him."
Let this be a lesson... professor's are just as capable at shorting you for beer money as anyone else.

The other interesting topic was Universities in the Caribbean or along the Gulf Coasts. As one of my professor's said, "It'd be so great to teach there. Good weather except for a hurricane or two. Fairly decent students. Very little departmental politics. That and I'm sure they'd hire anyone from SMU or SUNY, but there's always a problem with that Spanish requirement. They're always looking for some one who can 'speak at least basic Spanish', so that usually shuts down a lot of people on the market."
... *cough*...
reeeeaaaaaalllllllllyyyyyyyyy????
De verdaaaaaaaaaad?

And then there was the poor Dane, who began his lecture with a disclaimer, "I'd just like to point out to all of those who were at the dinner last night, the funky shoes, the hats, and the guys named Yeost are DUTCH. I'm Danish. Right? Alright..." All in good fun of course. It was the last presentation of the day and he had everyone laughing throughout his presentation on whether or not unemployment training programs in Denmark worked (the conclusion, while they don't seem to get the rate itself down, the people who go through the programs tend to stay employed for longer periods of time). Naturally of course he started with the silliest example he could find.
"So, in order to train unemployed people for truck driving jobs, the Danish governmetn decided to drop them in the middle of the forrest, blindfold them, and tell them to find each other. What this has to do with truck driving... well... honestly I'm sure it has nothing to do with truck driving, but its apparently still 'training.'" The best part was he had pictures. Hardened Danish truck drivers, blindfolded, in the woods of northern Europe looking for each other.
And then he whipped out the statistics. This guy was impressive. He gathered over 200,000 observations from his job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Denmark, and worked with a professor on the paper. "The professor is now enjoying some prestigious position at Copenhagen... I still work for the BLS Denmark. So if anyone wants to offer me a job... now's the time. But he was a nice guy." Just got credit for the other guy's work. Hm...

The other interesting character was the lady from Peking University, who despite her very well pronounced and versed English, spoke a completely different language from everyone else in the room. That is to say... she was a stats professor in a room of econometricians, who used different words for the same things.
After some haggling over definitions, assumptions made in econometrics that weren't made in statistics in general, and the usual Bayesian vs. Classical argument, we all understood each other better, and her topic was certainly interesting. I just couldn't understand it for the life of me (waaaaayyy too much Bayesian statistics for my poor brain).

Aside from that, I have apparently gotten the reputation as the "first year representative." According to the second and third years there, I'm the only first year who shows up to seminars. Which is true in some sense. One of the Indian first years showed up for this one though, so I had "back-up." Well I figure the more I sort of implant myself like a tick into the department, the easier it will be to get through qualifiers, and the more motivated I'll be to stay. The more I'm a part of the department, the harder it would be for me to up and leave. Another plus is that I get to see how papers are presented, what topics people choose to research, how they do it, how to defend it, and which professor's are going to tear it to shreds and then smile and say, "good job. Do better." (i.e. my micro and macro profs this year).
So I'm bouncing back and forth on research topics right now. Just entertaining as many ideas as possible before I actually have to start writing something. Meanwhile.. still studying.
According to the Kuwaiti, for the Macro qualifier "Just be sure to study the Macro homework very carefully." ... hm....
She passed the Macro right off, but took t he Micro and got it on the second run. I'm a little concerned at how many people I've met who haven't passed at least one of the exams on the first shot. So maybe this summer: I make no plans to work just in case. I would rather spend May and June studying everyday to pass if I didn't get one of the exams on the first run. And I guess if I do get it... Westborough, then Pullman... maybe make a little triangle with a stop in Jaurez... sounds like a plan.