Recent Exploits

I finished my first week of classes today and, man, it feels good. After a little rescheduling, I think I have a pretty good assortment of classes. My Capital Investment Analysis course is going to be tough. Our professor seems to fly through the material at a fairly rapid clip and says that he expects us to have read his lecture notes before we come to class. I'm not used to being this prepared, so its going to take some adjusting on my part. I overheard a conversation going on behind me about this particular class and one of the participants said something about a graduate student in finance not doing too well in the course even though he had obviously covered a lot of the material before. If that's the case, it is definitely going to be a slog, but it is my interest, so hopefully I'll enjoy most of it.

Another thing I'm having to adjust to is the size of my classes. My english course in Literary Theory is only about 19 kids, but my Economics courses are both around 40 people and are lecture-style courses in amphitheater-style classes. I don't think we have amphitheater classes at Whitman, simply because we never have more than 30 in a classroom at once. The anonymity is nice, at least during the first couple classes, but it is definitely going to make it more intimidating to ask questions.

Funwise, I have been playing a lot of squash and hanging around with my fellow Melvillites. I've been attending the squash team practices and playing with some really good players. There is this one guy, from somewhere in Canada, a big guy who looks sort of middle eastern, and he is just amazingly annoying. He reminds me a lot of this one guy who I used to play tennis with back in South Africa who once cried when he lost a match to me. I asked this Canadian whether he was going to try out for the team, and for which team, first or second, he would go for, and this guy turns to me and says: "I think I'll go out for seconds. I mean, I was clearly better than everyone in that group we were just in (a group that I was a part of) and I know a couple of those guys are trying out for seconds, so I'll probably have a good shot." I didn't know what to say. I REALLY want to beat him now.

Tonight I think we are all going to go out to the pubs for some drinks. The nightlife in St. Andrews is very good. There are a bunch of pubs, ranging from the chill, more relaxed establishments to the raucous, music-filled club/bars, so something for everyone's tastes. We'll see what we choose tonight. Hopefully nothing too crazy, but you never know.

Signing out from the home of Scotch,

Staten