COFFEE & BISCUITS

The last two days of the ASSA meetings were a whirlwind, as you can imagine as I remained silent for so long.

For a quick recap, here is to keep you up to date as to what happened since winter break began:

1. It was a very eventful winter break. I met and made friends with several new people — this I could not have imagined before, thinking that it’s going to be same old christmas break. It began with the girl sitting next to me on my flight from Chicago to Japan. She went to University of Chicago and got her PhD in Sociology and currently is an assistant professor at Michigan State. I found out that we worked on a similar field. In Hong Kong, I got to reconnect with various childhood friends and other friend’s friends. In San Francisco, in the hostel, I encountered many people and made friends with some (since most of them are there to attend the ASSA meetings anyways).

2. I just realized that regardless of how many papers I have written, never has one reached the final stage of readiness for publication in serious journals. To push it to that last extreme, it requires a lot of patience and work. I wrote two papers in rapid succession over the last month, and this week, to my frustration, I realized that those papers are not remotely even close to 40% done (on top of that frustration is that my advisor used my paper as scratch paper….*sob*!). It has been the case when you are just a student writing a paper just to turn in, that after you spend a couple all nighters you can wash your hand forever of the paper. Not as a grad student, where the process goes on and on, and despite several all nighters, it is not remotely even close. It is a rather trying process. I am not sure I’ll get a paper published at this rate. But I’ve come too far to turn back.

3. Winter quarter is the perfect time to work hard. February is the month to talk a lot.

4. In the Harry Potter books, the deatheaters’ “death mark” would pain them whenever Voldermort is close by. Well, I have a similar death mark. I realized that the itchy spot on my right arm tends to be itchy and all that rash will return whenever the demon that is called stress begins to creep in.