Back To School
It is that time of the year again when the kids wind down the holiday festivities/general merriment and head back to school. The sister is in a new year and my cousin is awaiting his GCE ‘O’ Levels. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kids I’ve known since they were freshmen, lucrative jobs in the bag, are anticipating senior spring – although they may not remember much of it, they will make damn sure it will be hard to forget.
I, too, am beginning some new courses, though I have yet to really decide which of Stoch Calc/Fixed Income/Regression Analysis I really want to tackle. All seem pretty good – Stoch Calc being the least practical, but most fundamental; Fixed Income being directly relevant to my work; and Regression Analysis being the single most important decision factor in me taking this master’s program in the first instance.
The future is always something to look forward to. In my case, I often feel that my tendency to look forward is in part due to an extreme aversion to looking back.
It is scary to recall these turns of the years, like grinding wheels of mortality. It is scarier to realize how little about me – that I consider truly me – has really changed, and how deathly afraid I am of that non-life we call constancy. A year ago I was in this same room I am in now, fatter, not doing very intelligent things. The year before that I sat in a different room hanging out on the couch of a fraternity brother, doing even dumber things. Before that – I am hazy on the details but I think I spent New Year’s on the plane home. Pretty much always alone, but for my thoughts.
Right now, at least, my memory of my past just kind of dissolves into a hazy mist of “Nothing much happened today”.
I can spin a narrative about myself, sure, but as Tyler Cowen observed, reality is so much fuzzier, and rough-on-the-edges, than that.
The same kind of goes for school.
It is nice to have a syllabus laid out for you: of the many things a syllabus does, perhaps the most important is that it promises, “here are all the things there are to know about this subject; I make no promises about depth; but here is the breadth of it.” Having a map is so much better than navigating the foggy unknowns.
It is nice to have quantifiable grades, and Right Answers, where you eventually know whether the things you are doing are right.
It is nice to interact with a large set of social equals on a daily basis. (Especially those of the opposite gender?)
It is nice to operate within a true meritocracy, where hard work and raw talent get encouraged and rewarded – instead of the alternative.
It is nice to have more doors open to you than you have time to peek into.
Reality is many things, but it isn’t nice.
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