In Kingston studying at Queens. I got here last monday and I have been very busy ever since.
When I first arrived, I did not really have a place to stay lined up so I ended up at the Rest Inn on Princess st. It was the hotel that the taxi driver used to take his girlfriends to so I was not sure what to expect. My first few days exploring Kingston and orienting myself around campus were a bit dissapointing. I could not help thinking about Vancouver and how nice things are there. Kingston, by comparason, is very small and provincial and not particularly pretty. It was also tough not knowing anyone and thus taking all my meals alone. There isn't much that is more depressing than eating crappy takeout Chinese food alone in a cheap motel room.
Classes started quickly. On wednesday we had a welcoming lunch which gave me a chance to meet a few people. I was a bit happy to find out that Ryan, a guy I took macro with a few years ago, is now a PhD student here so at least I would know one person. What surprised me most was that there were a number of professors there working the room. They were much friendlier than UBC profs ever were. After the pizza lunch we had a "welcome exam" in math and stats. It was crazy. I could do some of the problems, I recognised others as problems that I used to be able to do,but there were more still that were unfamilliar to me. I walked out of the exam room an hour early knowing I had failed it and worried about the concequences. Afterwards at the library, I was talking on MSN to my friend Matt who had done his MA the year before and he reccomended a good book for me to study from, which I did.
The next two days were all about living in my hotel room and going to the math review. The whole thing was still quite intimidating and I was feeling worse because I didn't feel at all settled. Happily for me, Noah came on saturday to help me settle in. While he was here we went around Kingston looking for stuff that was going on, but even though we found lots of people, it seemed like pretty much everyone knew everyone else and that we were the odd ones out. After some bubble tea, we headed back to the hotel room to sleep. Sunday Noah took me out to buy a mattress and some furniture. It was a major life saver as I have no idea how I would have been able to do it otherwise. I am very thankful for the help he gave me. He has just landed a job in Vancouver selling mutual funds. He is very happy about that because it means he can stay in Vancouver and live a decent enough lifestyle. I hope I will be able to move back there someday soon...
That night reality struck again. I went to the office and found that some classmates were studying there. We stayed and studied math and stats until after midnight. The rest of the week was spent going to the math review, going to the other classes and doing the problem sets for the math review. Micro seemed good, mostly a repeat of Halevy's class at UBC. The quant/econometrics class was a bit crazy especially because the professor did not really teach, he mostly just scribbled equations on the board and expected us to follow. The finance class looks like the best one. The prof is a smart Australian guy with a good sense of humour. I think the class is going to be tough, but it will probably also be useful and applied.
The math review test was today. I, along with most of my classmates, had been stressing about it since the first test a week and a half ago. This stress only got worse as the problem sets got harder. I studied harder than I had in a long time. When I finaly wrote the test I was shocked at how easy it was. There were no bordered Hessians, no partial derivatives, no t-stats, just definitions and questions about continuity. It was a big relief. After the test I went to the grad club with some of my classmates for a beer. Very nice to be done the first component of the MA. Now all I have to worry about is midterms, finals, and my thesis...
While all of this is going on, there is also intense pressure to start applying for jobs. Because we are applying for the same jobs as commerce and MBA students, the hiring is all done in the fall/winter of the final year and some of the deadlines have already passed. I managed to get one application out to RBC but I missed the deadline on the Goldman Sachs job because I wasn't ready. At least now I finally have a resume and a draft cover letter that I can tweak depending on the job so I can apply for as many jobs as I like in the next few weeks. The great thing about these jobs is that they are good jobs in investment banking and consulting, things that I would very much like to do. It seems that Queens is much more connected with the job market than UBC and that coming here was a very good career choice.
Now that the intense week is over, I am reminded again of how few people I know in Kingston. I guess I want to go out, but I probably won't because I don't like going to bars alone. Maybe I will just make it an early night and try to finish setting up my apartment tomorrow.
When I first arrived, I did not really have a place to stay lined up so I ended up at the Rest Inn on Princess st. It was the hotel that the taxi driver used to take his girlfriends to so I was not sure what to expect. My first few days exploring Kingston and orienting myself around campus were a bit dissapointing. I could not help thinking about Vancouver and how nice things are there. Kingston, by comparason, is very small and provincial and not particularly pretty. It was also tough not knowing anyone and thus taking all my meals alone. There isn't much that is more depressing than eating crappy takeout Chinese food alone in a cheap motel room.
Classes started quickly. On wednesday we had a welcoming lunch which gave me a chance to meet a few people. I was a bit happy to find out that Ryan, a guy I took macro with a few years ago, is now a PhD student here so at least I would know one person. What surprised me most was that there were a number of professors there working the room. They were much friendlier than UBC profs ever were. After the pizza lunch we had a "welcome exam" in math and stats. It was crazy. I could do some of the problems, I recognised others as problems that I used to be able to do,but there were more still that were unfamilliar to me. I walked out of the exam room an hour early knowing I had failed it and worried about the concequences. Afterwards at the library, I was talking on MSN to my friend Matt who had done his MA the year before and he reccomended a good book for me to study from, which I did.
The next two days were all about living in my hotel room and going to the math review. The whole thing was still quite intimidating and I was feeling worse because I didn't feel at all settled. Happily for me, Noah came on saturday to help me settle in. While he was here we went around Kingston looking for stuff that was going on, but even though we found lots of people, it seemed like pretty much everyone knew everyone else and that we were the odd ones out. After some bubble tea, we headed back to the hotel room to sleep. Sunday Noah took me out to buy a mattress and some furniture. It was a major life saver as I have no idea how I would have been able to do it otherwise. I am very thankful for the help he gave me. He has just landed a job in Vancouver selling mutual funds. He is very happy about that because it means he can stay in Vancouver and live a decent enough lifestyle. I hope I will be able to move back there someday soon...
That night reality struck again. I went to the office and found that some classmates were studying there. We stayed and studied math and stats until after midnight. The rest of the week was spent going to the math review, going to the other classes and doing the problem sets for the math review. Micro seemed good, mostly a repeat of Halevy's class at UBC. The quant/econometrics class was a bit crazy especially because the professor did not really teach, he mostly just scribbled equations on the board and expected us to follow. The finance class looks like the best one. The prof is a smart Australian guy with a good sense of humour. I think the class is going to be tough, but it will probably also be useful and applied.
The math review test was today. I, along with most of my classmates, had been stressing about it since the first test a week and a half ago. This stress only got worse as the problem sets got harder. I studied harder than I had in a long time. When I finaly wrote the test I was shocked at how easy it was. There were no bordered Hessians, no partial derivatives, no t-stats, just definitions and questions about continuity. It was a big relief. After the test I went to the grad club with some of my classmates for a beer. Very nice to be done the first component of the MA. Now all I have to worry about is midterms, finals, and my thesis...
While all of this is going on, there is also intense pressure to start applying for jobs. Because we are applying for the same jobs as commerce and MBA students, the hiring is all done in the fall/winter of the final year and some of the deadlines have already passed. I managed to get one application out to RBC but I missed the deadline on the Goldman Sachs job because I wasn't ready. At least now I finally have a resume and a draft cover letter that I can tweak depending on the job so I can apply for as many jobs as I like in the next few weeks. The great thing about these jobs is that they are good jobs in investment banking and consulting, things that I would very much like to do. It seems that Queens is much more connected with the job market than UBC and that coming here was a very good career choice.
Now that the intense week is over, I am reminded again of how few people I know in Kingston. I guess I want to go out, but I probably won't because I don't like going to bars alone. Maybe I will just make it an early night and try to finish setting up my apartment tomorrow.
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