30's the new 20

Neil brought home a copy of Jay Z's new album Kingdom Come a couple weeks ago. I thought that HOVA had retired from the rap game. The new album's alright. I really like track 7, called "30 something." Basically, Jay Z is rapping about how he has "grown up" and criticizes the black youth of today.

I was thinking about the line "30's the new 20" that appears a couple times in this song. I think it applies to so many facets of life these days. For example, people are getting married when they're 30 as opposed to an age closer to 20 for my parents' generation. Children are staying at home longer. Might not get out of school until you're almost 30. It's OK to still act immature when you're 3 decades old.

As long as you subscribe to the "you're only as old as you act" philosophy, you don't have to worry about aging. Maybe you can look, act, and feel like you're 20 when you get to be 30. Perhaps medical advances and healthier lifestyles in the future could keep pushing the envelope...in ten years, Jay Z may be rapping about how "40's the new 20."

La Fea Más Bella

Normalmente, cuando regreso a mi casa, no está nadie. Neil trabaja hasta la medianoche y la gran mayoría de los días, no regresa a casa. Entonces, tengo que cenar solo. Por eso miro la televisión. Pero para no perder mi tiempo/vida, miro Univision, el único canal en español que recibo con mi paquete de cable básico. A causa de tener un clase tarde, no como hasta casi las ocho por la noche.

Empecé de tratar de mirar "La Fea Más Bella" por Univisión cuando sea posible. Fui a www.esmas.com/lafeamasbella y aprendí que es una actriz que actua en el papel de la protagonista. Pensaba que es un hombre. También querría encontrar información sobre que si Luigi sí es gay o no. Pienso que sí. Si no es, entonces es un actor buenísimo.

Hay una coas peculiar sobre los capítulos: parecen que tendrán más desarrollo de la trama que de hecho tienen. Es como se puede ver un capítulo entero sin avanzar nada de nada.

Angelica dice que soy tan mujer: mirando las telenovelas. Expliqué que "La Fea..." no es una novela. Pero es diferente que los programas estadounidenses. No sé como.

A través de este programa, he aprendido muchas palabras. Creo que muchas de ellas son "mexicanas" y regionalismos. Por ejemplo, en vez de decir "¿que te pasa?" se puede preguntar "¿que tienes?."

Tuve miedo de perder mis habilidades de la lengua extranjera a causa de no tener clases ni amigos para ayudarme. Pues encontré la solución impersonal. Ojalá que siga funcionando.

Pick #2, Jaheim - Fabulous

This week's pick is "Fabulous" by Jaheim: track 3 off the Still Ghetto album. Even though he chooses to spell the song title correctly, instead of like my favorite rapper, I still like the song. I wonder why it is necessary to spell things out in songs.

I really like the message: Never g-i-v-e- u-p and keep your h-e-a-d- u-p...

Spigot

I Study 23/7

At the econ. department party on Friday night, I was talking to Svetlana & Anastasia (I mean Dr. ____ and Dr. ______...I don't know their last names, and that's how they introduced themselves to me at the beginning of the semester...I mean no disrespect). They inquired how I got that injury on my nose. I told them it was from soccer. They seemed surprised that I had enough free time to play soccer. After explaining that I don't play every day they were a little more cool with it.

I think I just decided that I should tell any professor that asks (excluding Coach and Dr. "mama" B. *not to be confused with Farasat*) that I have no free time. Economics is my life. In fact, I try to derive a utility function for myself and decide on a minimum level of utility before going to the grocery store. Then I try to minimize my expenditure to reach that level of utility. When I'm not at school, I'm studying. I listen to textbooks on tape when I'm in the car. I type up a dynamic program every time I reboot my computer. I hire people to clean my house and do my laundry just so I can have a few more hours of study time. I hardly sleep. I envy undergrads. I don't know how married people pay any attention to their spouses. I never go to parties (except the ones that my teachers are also invited to). I don't play sports. I use my office hours to brush up on theory.

Enough of that BS.

The reason I don't have to play dumb about free time with Coach & Dr. B is because they understand that life exists. Coach even told me that most of his colleagues forget what it's like to be a student. And honestly, it's not like this is the Ivy League, or a top-5 econ program. There's plenty of time to do what you want, if you budget your time right. I think that's a problem that we've all been coping with. It seems like when you're doing one thing you "should" be doing something else. Coach actually told me that it's a good idea to take some time off in order to keep yourself sane. Believe that. I like him. I hope he doesn't make me sit the bench.

I had a test today (Friday) and I have one Tuesday and another on Thursday. I have been studying a lot. I will probably study just as much as I did the past couple of days, if not more, in the coming days. I think this intensity of studying (which isn't the highest level I'm capable of) is what Svetlana, Anastasia, Farasat, et. al. expect us to be doing all the time. How unrealistic.

Diminishing Returns

Whitney has this policy where she does not work past the point where she is getting some serious diminishing returns to her time. In this graph, you can see diminishing returns to capital. Whitney's policy refers to her study time; therefore you can think of output as "stuff learned" or "questions answered." The capital axis becomes the time axis. You can see that there is a point in time beyond which there is not a very large increase in output per unit time put in.

She has shared this philosophy with me, and I like it. It makes sense. You can shift to another activity where you are not getting such steep diminishing returns to your marginal minute and hence increase your overall productivity. I just have a problem leaving something if I think that I should be finishing it. I think I would like to adopt her strategy...but I think that I need to make one modification:

The marginal unit of "output" might be very valuable, especially if it "completes" the puzzle of knowledge you are trying to synthesize in your head. Therefore I am, at times, willing to endure the diminishing returns in order to get the last part of output out of my efforts.

Perhaps next semester I will try to adopt this strategy and see how it works out for me. I could even give it a test run during the first part of the semester and hold on to it if it's awesome, while retaining the ability to go back to my old ways.

I came in here to write this because I realized that I was getting very low marginal returns on my econometrics studying. Final tomorrow. However, I think that I'm just writing this to unwind...then I'm going to bed. I'll get up in the morning and review before going to school. By the way, the wind chill (without bike-speed factored in) is supposed to be 31° on my way to school tomorrow. Sounds like fun.

Trasnochar

No soy madrugador. Especialmente no este semestre. Mi primer clase empieza a las 12:30. Por eso, no tengo que levantarme hasta muy tarde por la mañana. De hecho, son las 3:38 de la madrugada cuando escribo este texto. Mas, no tengo sueño. Desafortunadamente, no puedo estudiar más ahora porque he aprendido mucho esta noche y pienso que falta el espacio en el cerebro para otro trozito de información nuevo.

Para mi, es muy fácil acostumbrarme a un ciclo de la vida que empieza y termina unas horas después del ciclo de los demás. Sólo tengo que pasar una noche muy tarde y PUM, todo mi horario biológico está en disorden. Quiero (por lo menos mi cuerpo quiere) seguir dormido hasta muy tarde.

Al otro lado, cuando es necesario levantarme muy temprano día tras día, no suelo a esto sin tratar y tratar de acostarme temprano. Normalmente tengo que trabajar tan duro que cuando regreso a la casa, solamente quiero comer la cena, ducharme y acostarme. Sí pasa. Y es posible mantener este estilo de la vida cuando sé que tengo que levantarme para trabajar el día siguiente. Pero puedo romper con todo si salgo por la noche (o si no duermo hasta muy tarde) porque no tengo que trabajar por la mañana.

Este capítulo no tiene fin excepto fue una idea que escribí en el castellano. Ojalá que escriba con más frecuencia así. No voy a requir un nivel alto de pensamiento para las entradas en mi lengua extranjera.