Mmmm, Cantay so sexy

Cause Cantay gots a job for the spring semester, bitches.

Specifically I've been hired as a Supplemental Instructor by the Economics Department. I'll pretty much be like a TA with no office hours or grading responsibilities. All I'd really teach two little reviewish sessions a week to reinforce what the professor did in class. It sounds like a really nice gig, and I'm excited, yo.

Plus I get $1500 tacked on to my bank account, which isn't too bad because I project that I'll work about 7 hours a week (2 hours of teaching, 3 hours of attending the class, 1 hour of teacher development, 1 hour for miscellaneous whatever). There are roughly 15 weeks in the semester, so that boils down to 105 total hours of work. Divide that in and you get a pre-tax wage of $14.28 per hour. Skim off a couple of bucks and change for taxes and we end up with $12 straight for each hour of work. And that's sweet.

Adding to the fabulousness (and latent homosexuality) of the day, I helped my tennis team to win the finals mini-tournament that we played over the past couple of sessions, using my tight tie-dye shirt, bright red headband, and my awesome tennis racket with the powder blue grip. After class I also beat my fellow teammate Lisa, who was higher than me on our depth charts. I also beat Travi over Thanksgiving break. And one of the best players in our class complimented my vastly improved backhand today. Yay, results! Now if I can just manage an A in the class. How ridiculous and shameful it would be to get anything less.

Sigh.

I hate posting these expository blogs. No mentioning silly occurrences or real details that make life interesting. We'll see what we can dredge up on that front later.

Is it Sex Time yet?

Well, is it?

Chuck Norris?

I would never endorse this man's candidacy, but I sure as hell endorse his method of political advertising.

Rah, rah, rah! Suck it!

Apologies for the absolute triviality, but I fucking hate homework. At least I hate homework for my Game Theory class--the one I'm going to in forty-five minutes, the one that lasts for three hours, the one that has a paper due before Thanksgiving. That one. I'm increasingly resenting the highly mathematical approach we're taking, which might be fine in small doses spread out over a week like a normal class, but is death to someone like myself if I have to try to absorb three hours of it in the span of three hours. I spent over an hour trying to figure out what set of lotteries would satisfy the condition of second order stochastic dominance against a rather simple lottery and trying to express it on a simplex. That's the simplest way to explain it, it's only one part of a homework question, and it still sounds horrible. And it is, dearies, it is (largely, I say, because I'm not too clear on the definition of second order stochastic dominance).

It seems that having such a brilliant professor may wind up hurting us in the end. Perhaps if I beg him to go into more applied game theory and less of this mathematical rigor it'll be good, but I just don't know.

Yeah... so Pakistan is looking good.

I don't know Sarosh's politics, but I sure hope the police didn't find any reason to crack down on her. That would suck.

Otherwise I'm woefully ill-informed in the specifics of what's going on. First Bhutto is exiled, then she's back, then Musharraf seems to regret inviting her to the party, then a coup. And all those crazy religious extremists scurrying about. Man, this is almost as exciting as old school Turkish politics. All you need is to have the Kashmir conflict come up in the discussion and we'll be all set.

I can't stay long today, as I have to read some old law cases for my Industrial Organization class. (Yay! Law school's already started!) But I wanted to get that blurb out there. Good luck dealing with the tumult in your country, and assuming you're still in Lahore, your city as well.

Lawyering?

Man, big decisions are such incredible bitches for me when I have so much time to choose and change my mind. Picking my college the first time wasn't so bad because matriculation was more or less binding, but deciding whether or not to transfer to Texas was an agonizingly protracted decision because I had so much time to ponder and vacillate.

I am similarly tortured in career goals. I wanted to be a doctor throughout about half of high school, and a mediator for much of the rest. From the time I had to start picking colleges to the time I left GW I flipped through journalist, president of the United States, ambassador, professor of international affairs, public policy analyst, and professor of economics. This semester I've been a multipolar nutjob, switching almost daily between the options of professor of economics, high school teacher, public policy analyst, poker player, and lawyer.

Having soon-to-be filthy rich petroleum engineers as my roommates has probably given me a newfound desire for cash, and my doubts about my ability and motivation to do research have weakened my desire to go headlong into economics, and so I find myself leaning towards law at least for today. I have no idea what I could expect from such a career, but there's a good chance that I would actually quite enjoy work in some form of corporate law, especially if I can use my training in mathematics and economics to be awesome. There's also a good chance that I would hate my life and explode.

But the thing is, there is a none-too-small chance that all of my future careers will wind up that way, and if I were to hypothetically burn out in any one of them after five years, law would easily leave me in the best shape to rebound from an early midlife crisis (I'd be 31, financially well-off, and in possession of a JD).

In my Game Theory class I'm actually planning to write a short paper that would model this sort of decision-making for a student, but it would be much simpler, with only two careers to choose from, and probably only two time periods in which to choose. I would do much better if I could insert myself in that model instead of having time to make infinitely many decisions over a large set of career options--I would actually do better here to minimize my set of choices and force a deadline on myself. I wish I could.

Listerine kills genital warts

Fact or fiction? You decide.

All I know is that someone got to this blog by searching for that on Yahoo!. I always knew randomly titling these posts would eventually lead to increased readership.

Tomorrow I have a Probability test and homework to turn in, but I feel sick and I want to sleep, so I face that moral dilemma that always seems to strike me starting at this time in the semester: my grades are so good right now that I could easily absorb a minor error, so why not err now? Leaving this sort of question in its natural, rhetorical state leads to stupid things like Bs in Economic Statistics and Differential Equations, so I have to answer it. Don't err now, you pansy idiot!

And Danielle's visit was lovely. Unfortunately she's gone, and I'm alone, and my roommates just can't satisfy me as well as she.

Barack Obama intends to ratify the free trade deal made with Peru

And that makes me very happy. Yes, it's only one trade agreement out of the four still awaiting approval by the Senate, and yes, it is actually not opposed by the AFL-CIO, but damn if I'm not glad to at least see a glimmer of free trade in Senator Obama. If Obama can avoiding tacking left on economic policy and he keeps steaming through the way he is now, he'll most likely wind up with my vote (unless Bloomberg jumps into the race--then we'd have something interesting).

Oh, and Danielle's here. Hurray!