New semester, new hope
Posted by | Posted in Academics | Posted on 02-03-2010
明日は明日の君が生まれるよ
Tomorrow, a new you is born,
過去よりも強く今日よりやさしく
Stronger than you were back in the day, kinder than you are today
新たな道 前へ進む 自由の風の中
Along a new road, we continue ahead amidst the winds of freedom.
- “明日は明日の君が生まれる”, by Chocolove from AKB48
I think I make it a point to quote this song at least once every semester. The lyrics, the melody.. everything is just so powerful and inspires me to accomplish great things. It’s great to know that even though reality doesn’t offer you clean slates, by altering your mindset you can achieve a similar effect.
Yesterday was the first day of classes, and from what I’ve seen so far, this semester should be amazing.
My 21F.303 (French III) professor is super-energetic. In addition, we are participating in a program called Cultura, which links French language students at MIT with actual French students in ENSAM, a school in France. We participate in online discussion together, and near the end of March, we will send one of our students on a one-week exchange program to their school, while one of their students comes to MIT. I am really hoping that I will get chosen, although with my rudimentary grasp of French I’m not so sure of that. I’m definitely out of practice, and now I have traces of Portuguese pronunciation in my French, eep!
15.279 (Management Communication) actually seems like a pretty good class. The professor immediately touted it as a class to help us “get what we want”, which is a wonderful mindset to have. That’s why I’m there, right? Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate it to get much darker than that. Presentation skills aren’t really anything that interest me; it’s the psychological “manipulation” that does (hence, why I should go into marketing and sales…)
14.05 (Intermediate Applied Macroeconomics) was a bit of a disappointment. I’m not a fan of the professor thus far (this is ignoring the fact that we spent half the class trying to get the projector to work). The textbook is a measly 512 pages but costs $250 from the university bookstore if you want it new. Even used, it’s $140, and the Internet doesn’t offer much more favourable options. I think the cheapest I’ve found it was $125 used. It astonishes me why such a flimsy textbook could cost so much. I flipped through some of it and it seems like quite the rehash of 14.02 (Principles of Macroeconomics). I guess we’ll see how this turns out…
At this moment, I’m seated in the Dewey library, reading the first few chapters from Principles of Corporate Finance (by Brealey, Myers, and Allen), the textbook for 15.401 (Finance Theory I). I just attended the first lecture, and the content seems pretty easy and interesting. We’ll see how it goes.
Here is my schedule for the term:
- 14.05 – TR 2:30-4pm
- 15.279 – TR 11:30am-1pm
- 15.401 – MWF 8:30-10am
- 18.440 – MWF 1-2pm
- 18.06 – MWF 11am-12pm
- 21F.303 – MTRF 10-11am
I’m also planning to drop by some of the time for 21F.911 (Portuguese II). It is currently scheduled for MTWR 3-4pm, which overlaps with 14.05 half of the time. Thus, unfortunately I can’t officially register in the class, but that doesn’t stop me from sitting in and learning while I can, right?
To finish up this highly optimistic entry, I would like to mention that I achieved a beautiful 5.0 for my IAP semester, bringing my GPA up an entire 0.1, yippee =)