a little procrastination

so I should be going over some macroeconomics slides right now but i haven't yet worked up enough motivation. It's finals week and I can't believe how quickly this semester went by. Definitely the fastest yet. Anyway, in a few days i'll be done and i'll get to think about Christmas for a week. then i'll pack and get coffee with a bunch of people, spend as much time with stephen as his schedule allows, make a few bucks doing economics research, and fly off to sweden. it hardly seems real.

right now all i can think about are Peru's economic development policies from 1990 to 2000. i tried to study for econometrics this afternoon but it didn't feel very important. none of my exams really deserve much study time, at least that's how I feel at this point. i'm sick of doing work just like the rest of the student body. wouldn't it be nice if they could just teach us without any testing, sort of a 'get what you want for your tuition' sort of deal? unfortunately that would prohibit them from giving us degrees and i'm guessing that's what most people are here for. so economically, it would not be a good idea for the university, though I would enjoy it.

here are some preliminary thoughts on my trip to sweden which i will someday look back on to compare to my actual experiences. I expect it to be expensive but I really hope I can get over that and not be overly frugal so that I don't miss out on too many once-in-a-lifetime experiences. this is probably the only point in my life that i can afford to deplete my savings on european adventures so why not? the more i think about grad school, the more i think i won't go straight into it.

i will probably be pretty lonely at times. i know some alone time will do me good though I'm not sure how i'll react to being away so long (2 months more than I was in Peru). I'd like to do a lot of reading- more classics and some philosophy perhaps. i'm hoping that swedes sit in cafes and read. in peru it wasn't common at all. if I get homesick I suppose I can wonder around in IKEA or H&M. Too bad the exchange rate these days is pretty poor.

Exchange rates, interest rates, wage rates- all things I should be studying at this moment. It really is true that economics relates to almost every aspect of life. I can't help but look at life in terms of supply and demand, the free rider problem, and diminishing returns. I often wonder how I viewed the world before everything fell into rather neat economic graphs. Note to self: take an econometrics grad course next year.

Okay well perhaps I'll get back to work. Sweden still seems like an abstraction most of the time and the workload sitting on my shoulders prohibits me from ignoring the here and now. it doesn't really feel like Christmas time.