Ryu's Blog

Next week is the last week of Easter break for LSE students. And for those doing the MSc Economics course, there’ll be three mock exams in the first week, a course paper due the next week, follow by finals in another month’s time. Hence most students find this the most stressful period. The Easter break’s supposed to be the god-send gift for students to catch-up or be better prepared.

I started the Easter break in a serious mood, planned to review all the materials thoroughly to ensure I get a distinction. But things didn’t work out that way. As some of you might have noticed, I’ve been blogging more frequently. I think this obsession is a consequence of having a large chunk of time to myself. Instead of reviewing textbooks and practicing problem-sets, I’ve been reading blogs and articles online and found them much more interesting and intellectually stimulating (compare to the marginal benefits of redoing a problem set or deriving equations). For examples, I’ve just read many interesting writings by Nick Bostrom, miscellaneous essays by Paul Graham, and a recent paper on happiness by Will Wilkinson. I personally think the time’s well spent. Although my readings online are unlikely to help me with any of the exams, I believe I’ve gained substantially from many of the economic blogs I follow, both in terms of interests and insights. Tyler Cowen believes that in the future people will be learning economics through blogs and other online resources (I think it’s from this podcast), and I agree with him.

So I do not regret the way I’ve spent my Easter break. Although I was not as productive as I planned to be, I’m overall satisfied with what I’ve done. I’ve travelled around London and tried several nice restaurants, finished my MSc paper on merger simulation, watched a handful of movies, achieved my diet goal, and enjoyed listening to the new Bach and Mozart CD sets (again thank Tyler Cowen for the recommendations; a few of those CDs have been sitting in my Amazon cart for a long time, his blog helps pull the trigger).

But since I’ve a goal to achieve and would probably need all my focus, I’m changing my plan. From now until the end of the exams, I’d just focus on economics revision. I’ll continue follow some blogs online but  probably will not post new entry myself. Rather than blogging lots of nonsense now, perhaps I would be better off getting a more solid foundation in my learning to write more interesting things in the future. So for now, I’d be satisfied being a consumer of knowledge and ideas from others and hope that someday I would be able to contribute my insights as well.

Now it’s time to stay focus and do what ought to be done.