Garden stuff

I finally got around to planting some stuff in my garden. I took off about half of the straw to make it easier to make rows for planting (I probably used too much in the first place). I went out this morning in the rain and planted broccoli, spinach, two kinds of onions, and cilantro.

Basil, tomatoes, etc. will get planted in the next month or so. I think I'll grow more basil this year because I ran out of pesto way too soon last time. I might try different types of tomato plant this time, rather than having them both be Roma. Maybe a different "sauce" tomato like San Marzano and another variety that is a little more flavorful. We'll see what is available at the nursery when I get ready to plant. I keep threatening to grow garlic, but don't want to pay for bulbs because I'm a cheapskate. I wish I could grow pine nuts for making pesto. They are SO expensive. I might try walnuts in half of my pesto this year.

I will also probably plant sunflowers in the front of the house again. I was pulling weeds there a few days ago and I think there is already one growing (probably came from one of the plants from last year). Hopefully they will do better than last year. If I get moles there again this year, I won't try to drown them out like I did last year. That really screwed up the flowers and stunted their growth. I'm tempted to pull out the "bushes" that are growing there for more room, but that might be a pain in the butt that I really don't want to deal with.

Grades posted

Final grades for the winter term were finally posted yesterday. I did about as good as I thought I would, maybe slightly better.

Behavioral Economics: B+  
The group final paper could have been better and was the largest part (35%) of the grade for this class. I kind of dropped the ball by waiting for my team mates to do a little more. A little bit more effort probably would have resulted in an A in this class.

Economics of Green Power: A-  
I must have gotten a better grade on the final paper than I expected.

Energy Economics: A-   
Since I got an A- on the midterm, my final exam grade would have also been an A-.

Or maybe not

Sigh....I talked to one of my econ professors about the possibility of getting a minor in business. He thought it would could actually be detrimental in the eyes of many employers. I guess I need to rethink this again.

I dropped the intro to business class, but the class I was in and wanted to try to get back into was full. Of course someone grabbed the open spot I left behind. I emailed the professor of that class and have yet to hear back from him. I guess I need some kind of backup plan in case I can't get into his class. I'm pretty sure I will be able to, especially seeing how many students drop out of classes in the beginning.

Because registration has been open for over a month, there are very few options available to me that aren't already full. Sometimes I hate school. Like right now.

Class change for spring term

I made a decison to change one of my classes next term. I should have thought it through better when I first registered, but oh well.

I dropped Environmental Economics. This class is offered every term, so there's no rush on taking it. It is being taught by the same professor that I didn't care for that much. And the textbooks were the same, which kind of said that I might be hearing a lot of the same stuff over again. I would like to take this class eventually, but I think I want to take it from a different professor.

As well as majoring in economics, I have been thinking about getting a minor in business. I signed up for the first of 6 classes that I would need to take, BUS101 Intro to Business and World Affairs. Since it's only a 100-level class it should be relatively easy. I'm hoping it will give me a better idea if I want to go ahead and try for the minor. It should look good on a resume and will be very valuable if I end up going into business for myself. I found a used textbook for $41 and ordered it last night. The class is limited to 60 people. I'm on the wait list, but I'm confident that I will get in because a lot of people drop classes in the first week. Although it shouldn't matter, this wouldn't have been the case if I had considered this earlier. The remaining five classes for the minor all sound very interesting and are 300-level classes.

I'm also considering taking one class over the summer, but I HAVE to find a summer job if I want to do that. I should have one even if I don't take a class. I'm hoping the spring term will require less work than this term has. Then I'll have the time to start looking around for job possibilities while I'm still in school.

The End is Nigh

I should be working on my two final paper. But, true to form, I'm procrastinating. One is more or less done, although I'll probably still make minor changes to it throughout the night. Cause that's how I roll. It's due in class (last one!) tomorrow morning. This is for my Economics of Green Power class. My paper is on residential conservation/efficiency measures and using energy service companies (ESCOs) to finance retrofits and upgrades. Exciting, huh? I'll bet you can hardly control yourself. I was surprised at how much farther we can go with relatively little effort in these areas. They are a big reason our country's net energy use has gone flat even though we have more people and way more electronic devices. I think I'll get a solid B in this class. Possibly an A, but I kind of doubt it. I suppose it depends if he grades on a curve and if he does, how the others are doing compared to me. We will see.

My other paper (group project) is the one I mentioned before. It needs a lot of work still. I've spent a ton of time on this already and will be glad when it's done. Our group is apparently meeting tomorrow at 2 to get it wrapped up. We have until 11pm Friday night to post our paper. I've been dreading writing up coherent summaries of what we found, where we went wrong, recommendations, etc. I'm pretty confident we will address a lot of this tomorrow. And I'll have a couple of hours to kill between my last class (ends at 11:20) and when we meet. I haven't even finished addressing the last few issues with my own section of the paper - background/literature review. I was lulled into over-satisfaction by the praise the professor gave it during his recorded video critique (this guy is a gadget and tech freak). Tomorrow is also the last time this class will meet. I will still have a referee report due on another student's final paper, but it's not due until the last day of finals week. I might get an A in this class. I've done pretty well in most of the areas of grading (there are a bunch and they are a little complicated and somewhat arbitrary - more ADD stuff from this guy) and I am above average in almost all the areas, some by quite a bit. This professor does grade on a curve. But I don't know what kind of distribution he uses so I may only rate a B. Not that I would be disappointed with a B. This class has been challenging, confusing, stressful, and rewarding. I loved/hated it.

Our last regular class for Energy Economics was today. Our final exam is on Tuesday morning. I found this class very interesting and informative. Because of my great interest in the subject, I found it relatively easy to absorb the material. It didn't hurt that I really like the professor. I wish he taught more classes than the two I already had with him. We spent the last two class periods going over what will be on the final. I've been through this before and pretty much know what to expect. His classes are one of the few that I don't stress out about finals. At least not very much. That doesn't mean I won't have to study for the test. I'll have all weekend and Monday to do that. I think there is a pretty good chance of an A if I do well on the final. But my midterm was an A- so I'll have to get at least that on the final. Professor Katz also grades on a curve. I think the grad students get graded separately though, so I won't have to compete with them for my grade.

Latest school update

Behavioral economics is hard! I'm spending the bulk of my studying time working on stuff from this class. We have read 17+ peer-reviewed papers so far and most of them are 30-50 pages long. We usually read 2-3 a week and then post our reactions to them online. We've only covered a very small part of the different areas of this subject. I'm on a team with two other classmates and we have been working on our empirical paper (this will basically be our final) and the experimental setup. I've had to learn how to use Amazon's Mechanical Turk and how to make surveys at another site, Qualtrics. This is in order to collect data from actual anonymous human subjects. What a headache that was. The actual process was fairly simple, but learning what the process is has been a nightmare. I finally cracked it this afternoon. Yay for me! Now if I can just get my team mates to do a little more work (I've done the majority of what we have done so far) then I will be much happier. We have a good start, but we have a lot of work left to do. Even though this class has been very hard (probably the hardest class I've had so far) and very stressful, I have learned a LOT. It's a fascinating field that helps make more sense of economics and shows that standard economic models that assume our complete rationality are woefully lacking in explanatory power in many ways.

My two other classes are going reasonably well. I got an A- on my Energy Econ midterm. I have a lot of confidence for the final in this class. I did pretty well on my Green Power midterm, but that was only because so many people did a horrible job on the second part (including me. Apparently I'm not the only one who had a hard time understanding what he wanted) that the professor let us take it home over the weekend and redo that part. My final is a 5-page paper (double-spaced!!!) that should be relatively easy (I hope!) to write. I have a rough outline so far and have two+ weeks to finish it. Hopefully I won't procrastinate too much.

Yesterday morning I registered for classes for the coming spring term. It's frustrating that a lot of the classes I want to take are either at the same time or overlap so I can't take them. I was thinking about a weird schedule so I didn't have to take a teacher who I don't care that much for, but I decided it wouldn't have been worth it. I went ahead and signed up for that same professor. I'm sure I'll learn plenty, but I just don't care much for his teaching style. He's kind of full of himself. My new schedule is listed below.

• HST339U - Environment & History - Monday 5:30-9:10pm - This is one of my sustainability cluster classes. I like history. I like the environment. I should like this class (?). My first single day class at PSU and my first 'night' class at PSU. Commuting may not be easier, but the MAX should be less crowed and I shouldn't have to walk as far from my car. We'll see. I need 4 books for this class, which should cost less than $80 total.
• EC332 - Economics of Environmental Issues - Tuesday and Thursday 10-11:50am - This is the above mentioned professor. I don't know what the text(s) will be for this class. Most likely it will be another book he wrote and we will have to buy the latest edition of it. I'm a bit turned off by that. 
• EC345U - Marxist Political Economy - Tuesday and Thursday 12-1:50pm - This class should be interesting. I've heard a lot of different opinions about Marx. I've heard this class is very balanced and very informative. More of a history and critique than most economics classes. I heard the teacher is pretty good too. We'll see. 3 books for this class (abt. $50 total)

These classes are all 300-level rather than all 400-level like I'm taking now. Apparently that doesn't always mean what you might think, but I'm hoping for a slightly more relaxed pace for this term. The cost of textbooks will be more than this term, but still not too bad. Probably because none of them is an actual 'textbook'.

I spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks agonizing over whether or not to do graduate studies. I'm pretty sure now that I'm not going to do that yet. First, I don't want to have to take all the advanced math classes. Second, I really don't want an additional $25-40,000 in debt when I graduate. Third, I want to get back to work. Fourth, I don't know how well I will handle the much greater workload that graduate students seem to have. My age is showing. Anywho, these all seem to point to no graduate studies for me. At least in the semi-near future. Unless I get struck by lightning and become a genius.