Happy 2008
2008 began with essay-writing.
Granted, not everyone’s 2008 started with essay-writing. Some people don’t have essays due the first week. Some people do, but have decided to ignore them for the time being. Some people don’t have essays due the first week, but it’s due in the first month, and their friends started panicking and getting stressed, so in a twisted form of peer pressure they decided they should start, too.
You can always count on the LSE library to be lively – keyboards clicking, queues forming, and printers spitting out paper – on the second day of the new year. I walked into the library, kind of surprised but actually not, that students were already at it on January 2nd. Who am I to talk, really? I myself went to get a few books, return others, and print some notes. I ran into a friend from class whose reason for coming to the library on the second day of January was, “Well, I live close by. So… I thought I should?”
“I thought I should.” – This is a funny reason, funnier because most of the students in that library probably would’ve given the same justification. In fact, this statement is applicable for a lot of things pertaining to life at the LSE. For example, job hunting. Last term at my residence, amongst our group of friends, there was a sudden rush to apply for business consulting firms. One friend did, followed by another, and pretty soon everyone was applying for at least one of the major consulting firms. The other day we looked back on this phenomenon and seriously wondered what had gotten into us. “I wasn’t even remotely interested in working for a consulting firm,” one guy said. “Until a couple of the other guys started to apply, and for some reason I thought, ‘Crap, I better do that, too!’ I don’t know what that was about. I guess I thought I should.”
I’ve thought about jobs more seriously since, instead of simply being carried away by my peers and the business/finance/investment tsunami wave that blasts through the student body sometimes. Writing a generic cover letter and tweaking it each time, I made a goal to send one off to some international organization – small or big – once a week. With creating a thesis topic came a realization of what aspect of international governance I was interested in, so then after that it was just about figuring out what organizations were out there, and writing the cover letter.
On a different note, London so far has failed to meet its reputation for being “gray all the time, damp, dark, misty, foggy, and depressing.” It’s a lot sunnier (knock on wood!) than Vancouver, and warmer as well. Still cold, but in comparison to Vancouver, London is slightly warmer. I love the buildings and how each borough is characterful. But, I haven’t made up my mind as to whether I actually like London. When you’ve lived in a few different places of different nature, the big cities begin to show similar characteristics and you begin to notice the things that work and the things that don’t. Perhaps I’ll take more time this term to get out and about through the streets of London, to figure out what this city is about besides its dusty but beautiful architecture, the double-decker buses, the weekend markets, and the museums.
For the time being though… back to the essay.
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