Work Begins

I've finally begun lectures. On Monday we were introduced to the course and to each other. There are 18 people in my course. Again, it's really international - UK, Ireland, Turkey, Greece, Canada, Lithuania. The entire course is graded on two things: performance in the three hour final exams and the final project essays we have to write. We have homework due each week, but it's designed to help us make sure we know the material. It doesn't count for our grade.

We had a three hour lecture yesterday and we have another one today. Once the first week is over we'll have a little bit lighter class load acturally - 1 hour on Mondays, 4 hours on Tuesday, 2 hours on Wednesday, 1 or 2 hours on Thursday and 3 hours on Friday - until November, when we only have 1 hour on Friday. The year is divided into three terms, but we take the same three classes all year - they run continuously. Since this course is designed to count as an Undergraduate course in Economics, we actually take most of our classes with undergraduates. We haven't had any such lectures yet though.

John Maynard Keynes taught at Cambridge, so already I've heard a lot about Keynesian economics. We actually had our lecture in the Keynes room, with a photo of the guy hanging on the wall. And our lecturer said he was taught by Keynes' colleagues. Our lecturer also presented criticisms of Keynesian economics by prefacing it with, "Now I personally think Keynes was 100% right, but many people say. . ."

We also had the societies fair yesterday. It was a really big ordeal, held in a sports complex. The place was so packed that they only let people in as fair goers exited, like being in a night club or something. Inside the place was so packed you couldn't move forward. There were societies of every type. Every major religion, and then some was represented (the Athiest club was right next to the pro-life club, which I thought was interesting - the pro life guy was on his own, but the athiests were attracting quite a crowd. Every political party was there. There were a whole slew of role playing/medieval combat/live-action role playing clubs to join. There were something like eight clubs relating to international development. There were a lot of musical societies - choruses, orchestras, jazz enthusiasts, indie rockers, death metal, you name it.

On Sunday we took a walking tour of Cambridge with Fitzwilliam college. We went inside King's College Chapel, which is basically a Cathedral without wings. It was very tall, very gothic. We also learned that Cambridge University's main library is a copyright library, which means it has a copy of every book ever published in England. I went in to check it out yesterday and yes, they pretty much have every single book there is - but no DVD's, which is what I was really hoping for.

Anyway, I don't have class till this afternoon, so I'm going to try and find some new Jeans. My bike chain has eaten one of the two pairs I brought over.