Exam Revision at LSE

Now that I'm done with my trip, the last leg of my journey at LSE begins: studying for exams. When I applied to LSE and learned there was a five week break between Lent and Summer term, I naively assumed that it was an actual break. Actually, because all of one's grade at LSE is based on the final exams, you get some rather perverse effects that lead most students to slack off for most of Michaelmas and Lent terms then study their butts off over most of the Easter Holiday and straight into Summer term. 

As a General Course student, I'm in a somewhat different situation. This being a rare chance to be in Europe, I naturally wanted to spend most of my Easter Holiday traveling and not holed up in the library. In addition, I am blessed to have the opportunity to visit Italy with my mom and dad and see my Italian relatives next week, and then have my parents and sister join me for a week in London the week after that. Naturally, I am very excited to see my family and explore Italy and London with them! However, the result is that instead of taking three weeks of Easter Holiday to study and then not letting up until exams in late May / early June, I only have one week of studying over the holiday and am going to be spending most of the first week of Summer term with my family.

However, I think I've been keeping up with my coursework more than most LSE students (I was one of four students out of my class of 25 to show up for a mock exam in my economic history class at the end of Lent term), and I'll do a bit more studying during the time I have. Altogether, I think I'll be fine, and I actually prefer having a few more weeks of really good fun with friends and family to having somewhat easier studying days. 

However, today is not one of those days of really good fun, but rather intense studying. So, I'm off to the library! 

(As implied in the title, I should not call it studying, but revision if I want to be properly British!) 

Updates to Come

I returned on Friday from my 18 day trip to Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Istanbul and am still a bit exhausted from whole thing! I had a great time though with some wonderful people.

As usual, I really don't feel like dealing with uploading a bunch of photos right after the trip, but rest assured that I will be updating this space soon (and Facebook).

Blogroll update

Observant readers may note that I've made a few updates to the blogroll on the righthand side over the past month. The reason is that there have been a few big shakeups recently in the wonkosphere. First, Ezra Klein left wonkblog to start a new venture about three or four months ago. Shortly thereafter, Mathew Yglesias left Moneybox at Slate as did a few other wonky writers at the Washington Post and the New York Times. A few weeks ago, they all came out together with Vox, a website dedicated to posts discussing politics, economics, and explaining the news. Meanwhile, Nate Silver left the New York Times and brought FiveThirtyEight to ESPN. I too was scared that he would turn into some sports jock, but the website still satisfyingly dedicates the majority of its space to politics, economics, and general data analysis, allowing me to cheerily skip over the boring stories about baseball. Nate has also poached and found some good talent from across the internet. Vox and FiveThirtyEight together probably have the majority of my favorite writers on the internet, so this is naturally very exciting for me. A third link I've added is Emma Pierson's blog, Obsession with Regression. Pierson is 22 years old (!) and already involved in a lot of interesting statistical work with groups such as 23andme, Okaycupid, and Eharmony. She also writes at FiveThirtyEight, which is how I heard about her. Next year, she's going to be a Rhodes Scholar doing something incredible and making me feel inadequate for not being remotely close to her current successful nerdy trajectory. Nonetheless, her writing is very interesting, passionate, and funny.

Check out the three new sites!