Semester End & Sunset

Had my last final yesterday. Semester one of graduate school is over. I've had enough of the library for quite a while. The past 4 months really flew by. Definitely an interesting experience. New city, new challenges, new friends.

The first real snow of the season started while we were taking our test. Some of my classmates from California had never seen a substantial snowfall before. There are some easy metaphors of the cleansing renewal of the soft blanket of white powder over the campus in there, but I'll leave them alone. We headed out to Sunset Grill & Tap in Allston afterward to celebrate. Like all hip places, the lighting was pretty dim so the shots are fairly grainy.



I'm heading home for a couple of weeks tomorrow. Having a winter break will be nice. I haven't had this much time off since before I started working 2.5 years ago. The holidays should be nice.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Young Me, Now Me

I haven't been very active here (or on Flickr) recently. A combination of the encroaching cold, midterms/homework, and having done the same things repeatedly with visitors has left me without a whole lot of new things to share. I'll have to be more creative in coming up with things to put up here.

The title of this post is a reference to the excellent blog/project, Young Me/Now Me, in which people recreate old baby/childhood pictures of themselves. Unfortunately, I have not done this. I do, however, have a bit of my past. On my way to Wyoming last July, I made a point of finding my old elementary school in Evanston, IL (just outside of Chicago).



I attended Willard Elementary from kindergarten through 2nd grade. I have some surprisingly lucid memories of this place. Recess in the snow, scraped knees, friends, bullies, Mrs. Bee (Bartholomew, really) and her bee themed room, and, of particular relevance here, where and how I hurt myself doing stupid things. The cement stairs pictured were where we lined up to enter the building. One morning I happened to be running up those stairs and slipped on ice which resulted in me cracking my chin on the corner of a cement step. I vividly recall making my way to the nurse's office trailing blood behind me. The swings at the bottom were where I attempted to imitate the older boys that were doing back-flips (sort of) off of the swing. I tried and, of course, failed. I landed on my chin, again, and somehow bit down into my tongue, immediately filling my mouth with blood. Once again, I made my way to the nurse spitting mouthfuls of blood everywhere. The yellow spiral slide is actually where my brother jumped off and broke his arm. I remember this because I thought it was great that I got to leave school early when my mom came to take him to the hospital.

As these things usually go, seeing this place again, I was struck by how small it all seemed. It's provided some interesting symmetry with some of what I've been thinking about lately. Being in graduate school, I'm constantly reminded of how vastly more intelligent or ambitious than me some people are. Not that this sends me into crippling self-loathing, but it recalibrates the expectations that I have for myself. Those swings were a major fixture in my life for a couple of years, but I outgrew them. Later on, as most teenagers tend to, I thought I was a lot cooler and smarter than I actually was. Now, it's both sobering and illuminating to be presented with another imposing obstacle. Maybe some years later I'll look back and marvel at how I could have been so daunted by it, but for now I'll just have to try and do a back-flip off of it.

The Emerald Necklace

So I've finished my first set of midterms. It's been a busy few weeks. Certainly an interesting experience to be reliving this part of student life again.

I made it out to the Arboretum today. Walked down the Emerald Necklace, which is a series of parks that starts from the Boston Commons and makes a 5-6 mile loop to the south. While it was very nice, I think I'm a little foliaged out.



On another note: there are a lot of things that I've been enjoying about grad school so far. I feel like it's been challenging and I'm learning valuable things. I've also been more social than I've been in the past. Boston's a nice town. But from time to time, the thought occurs to me that this is a very big gamble. There's no guarantee that this will pay off financially in the end. Not that that's the most important thing to me, but it is something to consider. Being in the Development Economics program, conversations about future careers with others aware of what development entails usually involve the preclusion of financial success as a motivator. So, the real question is whether or not this particular degree will pay off in the sense that I'll be able to make a positive impact in the world afterward. I think in college, the prospect of doing substantive work was never real to me because I always knew in the back of my mind that I'd probably be going back to school. Now that I'm here, I find myself having to contend with the fact that this is where I've cast my lot and will soon have to deal with the fruits of my labor, or lack thereof. It's a bit daunting, but not something I'm entirely unprepared for.

Corey Hill

I was going to go to the Arnold Arboretum today, but the forecast was calling for rain. As it turned out, today was a sunny and pleasant, albeit windy, Autumn day. Having already resigned to spending the day indoors doing homework and maybe studying for my midterms, I instead took a break and walked to Corey Hill Park. Corey Hill is a park at the top of a large hill about a mile from my apartment. You have to walk up Summit Avenue to get to the top of the hill and it's a bit of a hike. I don't envy the people that have to make that trip everyday.



It's a charming little park. The views weren't as spectacular as I was led to believe, but it was nice. There was a lot of nice light filtering through the changing leaves.

On another note, the past week has seen several late homework filled nights. With a couple more assignments coming up and midterms next week, I have, and will continue to, consumed an exorbitant amount of snack food (Trader Joe's Cats Cookies are crack). It's a little interesting to note how foreign doing homework felt at first and how quickly and naturally I fell back into a pattern of procrastination. It's not been too bad though and hopefully my first tests since May 2007 won't be either. YAY, SCHOOL.

(Definitely went a little bokeh crazy here.)

Scenes From Boston (ii)

This past weekend was the last in a long string of weekend visits from people back home. While I appreciate seeing familiar faces, it's been admittedly a little tiring and I'll be glad of some time to catch up on work and sleep. That said, these weekends have been good opportunities to go out and see a lot of different things in Boston (and a lot of the same things over and over again, haha).



There was an Oktoberfest at Harvard Square on Sunday and a parade. I have no idea what the purpose of the parade was, but these alien/monster guys definitely accosted me. Also, Freedom Trail and Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market again. I did get to check out the South End and the ICA, which was pretty cool. I will have to go back and explore the South End some more.

A good weekend, but a busy couple of weeks filled with homework and midterms coming up. Yay, school.

Mount Monadnock

I went hiking here yesterday with a friend that had invited me to join his group. Mt. Monadnock is a hike in New Hampshire a couple hours outside of Boston that, according to Wikipedia, is one of the most frequently climbed mountains in the world. Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous and the leaves have started to change. It was beautiful, although I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked while I was busy trying not to fall off of rocks or lag too far behind the group.



Boston is actually visible from the top 70-80 miles away. I wasn't really able to get anything more than pixel-y blobs on the horizon though.

I'm going to try and make it out to the Arnold Arboretum near here next weekend. I should be able to take in a lot more foliage then.

Boston Public Garden

After a week of heat, humidity, and rain it was really nice to have cool, early Autumn weather today. I stopped by the Public Garden. Saw a few wedding parties, a Quidditch game, and an old homeless man with squirrels crawling all over him.

Scenes From Boston (i)

A lot of walking around this weekend. Went by the Museum of Fine Arts (courtesy of the Smithsonian "Free Museum Day"), the Sam Adams Brewery, the North End a couple of times, and an evening walk on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge.

The leaves are beginning to change color. I'll hopefully be able to catch some nice New England foliage soon.

Fenway

I went to Fenway tonight to catch the Red Sox/Orioles game. It was interesting to see the difference in energy levels among the fans here as compared to Nationals Stadium. Boston fans cheer wildly for singles and jeer scathingly at errors. I guess people are more involved when you're not consistently in last place.



I also caught "The Town" last night. It was cool to recognize all of the places around Boston that appeared in the movie. It makes me want to go watch "The Departed" and "Gone Baby Gone" again.

Oh, and the Orioles won 9-1. Suck on that, Boston. Way to go, Maryland.

Harvard Square & Homework

Went by Harvard Square with a visiting friend today. The afternoon and early evening were fairly overcast, but I caught a little light through the cloud cover before dark.



In other news, I am now pretty bad at doing homework (or at least equally as bad as I ever was), which can be evidenced by the fact that I'm doing this while my books lie open in front of me. Also, relearning calculus is like riding a bike after a long time. A really crappy, uncomfortable bike with a chain your shoelaces keep getting stuck in.



That said, it's a little surprising how my memory of undergraduate economics is colored by the couple of weeks of graduate economics I've had so far. In my microeconomics class we've been going over identical concepts to the ones covered in my freshman microeconomics class, except the level of analytical rigor is so much greater. Instead of simply drawing supply and demand functions and understanding their mechanics graphically, we're now asked to derive these behavioral theories mathematically. I keep thinking about this particular xkcd comic:

317 St. Paul & Beacon Hill

As has been customary, here are a few shots of where I'm living while in Boston:



It's an old building in an old neighborhood. Some oddities remain that show its age, like an intercom system (that doesn't work) that looks like a turn of the century telephone, but it's not without it's charms. I don't think I'll mind holing up here for the next year and a half.



Today, I made it out to Beacon Hill to explore and grab lunch at The Paramount. The afternoon had a bout of rain that produced some very dramatic clouds. It cleared up before too long. Beacon Hill is a quaint historic neighborhood that's very photogenic and The Paramount is a small, but great eatery. I'd definitely go back. I hear their breakfast is excellent. All in all, a pleasant day.

Cross Country Redux

Since April 2009, I've gone on three separate cross country road trips. Despite enduring D.C. traffic for years, I really enjoy driving. Perhaps less so in the monotony of freeway traffic, but I find it a calming experience. Driving is primarily an observational activity and once the mania of urban/suburban life peels back, there are few things I find more peace in than driving through an idyllic countryside and watching America unfold through my windshield. Without a plane to catch or reservations to keep, being on the road affords a liberating sense of anonymity. I find it much easier to quiet my mind and be still during these times.



I'm disappointingly untraveled abroad, but through these trips I think I've seen more of America than most have. I'm happy to say that America is gripping and diverse. Rolling through new cities, wandering around national parks, or just stopping to admire the desert, with just a few tanks of gas I've found more than enough beauty and adventure within our own borders.



As if to illustrate the wandering spirit of the road trip, this took much more time and ended up being way longer than I had anticipated. As I went back through my archive of photos and retraced my steps across the country, I felt a similar sense of meandering.

Boston So Far

So, I moved to Boston on August 21 with the help of a few friends. Since then, my time has mostly been spent complaining about the weather, looking for good food, and wandering around the city and the surrounding areas by myself. Thankfully, the whipping rain and miserable heat (compounded by a lack of AC) have given way to the coolness of the onset of Autumn, I've found a few decent spots to grab a burger and pizza, and I've been pleased to discover that Boston is a nice place to walk around. It has the interesting quality of feeling at once decidedly urban and accessibly small. An abundance of historic architecture imbues a sense of history and narrative.



I'd grown somewhat tired of walking around the city by myself and I hadn't started class yet. Without the opportunity to meet and make friends, I'd lost some motivation to continue to explore on my own. Thankfully, a couple of friends, that I knew from elsewhere, were making a day trip on Labor Day to Cape Cod and were kind enough to invite me.



Cape Cod, as it turns out, is beautiful and exactly as I imagined New England beaches to be: clean, serene, and rich white people. Also, Provincetown is super gay. Pink houses with burly dudes in flamboyant costumes dancing on the porch to club music kind of gay. But, otherwise, a nice town.

I started class this Wednesday and it's been an unusual experience. Being in school voluntarily and being responsible for financing it is a totally different experience than it was in college. Also, getting back up to speed mathematically is giving my brain a workout it hasn't had in years. And, wouldn't you know it, instead of doing the readings for my lecture tomorrow, I'm spending time getting this blog back up. Nevertheless, I'll do my best to keep this space updated with the goings on here in Bean Town.

Homework time!