Beginning of the year

Wednesday was the first day of classes for me, since I do not have class on most Tuesdays and did not this week. Here is my schedule:

MW 1:30-2:45 On War
MW 3:00-4:15 Tax Policy
Some Tuesdays 3:30-4:45 Peer Advising
W 5:00-6:00 Honors Program Research Colloquium
Whenever I feel like it Senior Thesis

That might look like a lot to the untrained eye. The untrained eye would be dead freaking wrong: essentially, I only have class most weeks on Monday and Wednesday and I do not start class until the afternoon, with no evening classes. Life's hard.

On War is a political science class which examines the causes of war, the effects of war and how and why wars end focusing on the Napoleonic Wars, WWI, WWII, and Iraq II. The class is taught by Sebastian Rosato, who has a ridiculously good teacher score on NDToday, where we can rate our professors (and, damn, that academic record is impressive. If you didn't click on the link: B.A., Cambridge University; M.Phil., Oxford University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago). He's young and British, and in the intro class he was really really funny, which is always good. Also, he's Dan Krcmaric's thesis adviser, and Dan says he's really nice.

The Tax Policy course is taught by my thesis adviser. I think the class is going to be really interesting, because it looks at taxation from an economic perspective and a political perspective. So, yeah, I like my two classes. Again, two classes. This semester is going to be fun.

The Honors colloquium is just every week three people in the Honors Program will get up and talk about their research, where they are, etc. Since I had to be at a meeting halfway through the class, I got first dibs on when to sign up. I figured, ahh, what the hell, and signed up for next week in the first slot. If I don't do what they want, who can blame me? That's the beauty of going first. The only problem is that I'm supposed to talk for 20 minutes. I have no clue what I'm going to say.

Yesterday was a good day. Ran 7 1/4 miles on the treadmill in the morning, finished up the second DVD of the last season of the Wire (only four episodes to go. That makes me sad). After lunch, I took a quick nap, and I was lucky to check my email instead of going to run an errand, because they sent out an email announcing the MSU ticket lottery was from 12-4 on that day. I would have been mighty disappointed to miss the ticket lottery for the one away game I have a realistic shot of going to, considering tickets to UNC are damned near impossible to come by. Hopefully I win (actually, I just checked the winning numbers, and I don't think I won. I have my tickets in my room, but I'm not there right now. Darn).

Then I had a dinner up in the million dollar + donation box with the other peer advisers. The view was awesome, and I should have had my camera to get some nice pictures. I was up there a few years ago with the Reilly weekend, but I had forgotten how great of a view that was.

After running that errand (booze run, of course. What other kind of errand does a college kid run?), I got back to the room at 9PM, and COLLEGE FOOTBALL WAS ON. Oh, it was glorious. I hadn't seen a college football game on television in ages, and it was good. Drew and Charles have a sweet new flatscreen hi-def TV, so we watched South Carolina-NC State, and then watched Obama give his acceptance speech in Hi-Def. So I was super excited all around last night (the Rolling Rocks didn't hurt, of course). We're still one week away from ND football because we have a silly schedule. I can't wait for next weekend. Max is coming to town with another kid from Chapel Hill, so that will be cool that some PD people get to see ND.