I survived the first week of classes! Not entirely unsurprising, but we were definitely in full swing -- no syllabus week boredom around here, as there are only ten weeks to get things done as it is. My classes aren't bad: statistics is vaguely familiar and political economy is all intriguing game theory. Then there's also micro economics (fascinating in theory) where we have resorted to passing notes to each other in the back of the class in order to remain awake. I've never met a less compelling lecturer in my life. But, on the bright side, I'm only in there for nine more weeks!

The challenging part of the last week was time management. I'm only in class for about nine hours, but then there are all of the workshops (professors and graduate students get together topresent and dissect colleagues' papers) ; guest lectures; soccer matches (we've got two weekly pick-up games going at the moment); organization meetings; career services luncheons; group work meetings (we're encouraged to do all of our problem sets in groups -- forced academic socialization is one way to address the tendency of everyone here to be reclusive); and, of course general reading and studying.

Plus we seem to have quite a social class. There are nearly constant invitations to shows, parties, games, and who knows what else. There's tons to do in this city and everyone seems to keep track of different facets of scene -- brilliant and maddening at the same time, as it is impossible to do it all.

If anything, things look to only get busier from here. We've got the Harris Follies (the school sketch variety show) coming up in December, and somehow I've ended up on the writing team; I'm also hoping to work on the Chicago Policy Review, a student-run academic journal. The mentoring program begins this week, as well, with the annual gala dinner (my mentor is Hugh Parry, he's the CEO of Prevent Blindness America or something like that), and we're all expected to be starting the search for summer internships, too. Whew.