Finals (Fall '06)

Once again, finals have come and gone. And once again, somehow, everything got done.
It really is amazing to me, every semester I hit this point usually during the reading week that I feel like I’m going to flunk or throw myself out of my apartment window. But every time, it all gets done. This semester was no exception. And now, there’s just one semester left.
Anyways, here’s the rundown this time around.
Chinese:
I’ve never had a Chinese semester that I felt totally good about, and I think that’s something I’m just going to have to reconcile myself to. This semester was interesting because our teacher, who is from the Summer Program in Beijing, doesn’t really speak English. So we got to learn immersion style. Which started out terribly for the first few days, but then somewhere in there turned out ok, and I actually feel I learned more than I had the previous year, which was good. And our teacher was very reasonable in terms of her expectations of us, so it ended up working out.
The only downside was the final grade for this class, which was a B. I did poorly on the last regular test during the semester, but I did some work to make up some of the points, and thought that I did ok on the final. I did well on my oral final, so honestly I’m surprised I didn’t get a B+. This hurts too because this is a five point class, where most classes are three. I’m trying to edge my overall GPA up to 3.6, so the lower grade than I was expecting didn’t help matters any. But, all in all I can say that I gave it my best effort, guess I’ll just have to let it go.
Lit Hum:
This class was awesome, easily the best class of the semester, and quite possibly the best class I’ll have taken at Columbia. It’s a year long class, so I’m taking the second half in the spring, and really looking forward to it. The texts that we covered in it were pretty good, but the real thing that makes this class so great are the students, and our instructor, Professor Jill Muller.
I knew half the students in the class on the first day, so it really was like taking a class with my friends, which was very important to me to do at least once while here at Columbia. And the rest of the class bonded up pretty well, so we all had a good time together.
But the other factor that made this class work was our teacher. Prof. Muller is/was herself a GS student and had two young children when she was working through her degree, so she understands exactly how we all feel. And she herself said that she sees her job, and primary strength here at the school not as research, but as teaching, which she truly is gifted at. She was always fair and even-handed in guiding the class, willing to listen to & consider almost any reasonably articulated argument or perspective, and brought a tremendous amount of insight and wisdom to our group. A fantastic experience, not without its challenges, but the one class I knew I would be able to get an A in, which I did.
Economics of Money & Banking:
This too was a very interesting course, and easily the best economics course I’ve taken here. This course focused on understanding how banking actually works in considering the balance sheets of banks, and the idea that every asset (except for gold) is someone else’s liability. Which means that it helped us think about and understand a number of complex financial transactions, and who would be on the other side of those deals, which were important and interesting topics to consider. I feel like I learned a ton, and the professor did a great job of delivering the lectures, it is clear that he has an excellent mastery of his subject. I’d highly recommend this course to anyone who really wants to understand conceptually how banking works, and how it has changed in the last 15 years or so. And I recommending taking it with Mehrling, as his approach to the course and his material is quite unique.
I did well on all the homework, got a very good score on the midterm, and feel I did very well on the final. I was pleased & gratified to find I had gotten an A.
Oil and the Macroeconomy (Senior Seminar):
Seniors at Columbia in the Econ department are not required to write a senior thesis, that’s optional for the honors program, and really only make sense if one plans to go on and do grad work in economics, which I don’t. But they are required to take a senior seminar, which is a single semester, and write the seminar paper, which is about half the length of a thesis. The broad topic of my seminar was oil and the macroeconomy, and I chose to do my paper specifically on Brazil. Without going in to too much detail, Brazil has been cutting their foreign oil imports steadily since the late 70’s and replacing that consumption with ethanol, which they make from sugar cane. I decided to try and simulate what would have happened to their economy if they hadn’t taken that step, and kept importing the same quantities of oil. It turned out to be a fairly interesting paper.
The seminar classes are small, ours was 14 people, and they only meet once per week. Our class director was a visiting professor from Baruch College, but I very much enjoyed working with him. He helped direct our research, and encouraged us to take our ideas seriously. Some of the papers he’s suggested further work on so that they could be published in journals, which I think is great.
My paper turned out pretty well, and my presentation I think was good too. These were our only deliverables in class, so given that I feel I did well on both of them, and so once again the A was within reach, and achieved.
So overall, this was a pretty good semester, certainly my best one academically. Now I plan to enjoy the time off between now and spring, and be ready to plunge back in one more time for the final semester.