I have been meaning to post for some time now but could not come up with anything good to say.

The other day it struck me that I was wasting my time. Not that I should not be doing a Master's, but that since I was in this program, I should 100% focused on it because it is my job. I have taken the freedom I have because I am in an academic context and used it to drink too much, sleep too late and spend time playing simple video games in the office. After the let down that I got from midterms, and the respite from the post midterms parties, I guess I felt a bit of an emptyness. An existential freedom that I did not want to face. I was humbled by my performance and questioned whether I even belonged here in the first place. Since leaving is not an option, escape became the default. Escape from the lonliness I have felt for the last few months, escape from the courses I don't understand, escape from the uncertainty I feel about the future. I spent more time in the company of debaters who respect me for being a grad student and give me an alternative social context to the 49 people doing MAs in economics. I thought about going back to Vancouver over the break and the people I want to see there. I think about Rae and how my life would be different if she were here with me...

Now, exams are less than two weeks away and I know I have no more time to waste. I will bite the bullet and study econometrics until I understand it, and then I will move on to micro and finance. My motivation will be that this is my job and it is damn better than the last job I had and if I screw this up I can't expect to get anything better.