Michaelmas Term Begins!

Today was the official start of the Michaelmas Term. Yes, that fancy phrase does simply mean the fall semester! And, if you are wondering, the spring semester is denoted as the Lent term, and unfortunately, the summer term does not get a special name. Anyways, while real classes do not start until Monday, today marked the start of the term. It also was a very lucky day for me as well as a day filled with academia.

To start with, I registered for courses this morning. While I had to pre-select the three I had to take, I got  to finally decide what option to take. I am waiting to hear back if I am selected into the course, but if I am, I have quite a lot of free time! We were able to choose our seminars (discussion classes). Couple of weird sentences written here, but I'll do a whole post on classes once they start!

My loan was also released today. LSE officially was able to draw down my first loan check. I won't get it until next week, but at least I can almost finally say I have the money that I will owe for the rest of my life.

Ticket for Kofi Annan

The first part of my lucky day was clearly those two different results.  But, I also landed an internship today! It will be a paid internship that I had the interview for earlier this week. I'll post more specifics on it later since it is actually quite a new position, and it is still somewhat being developed. I start Monday with an introduction session with the rest of the intern class. Looking forward to it!

Kofi Annan

LSE is well-known for having exceptional guest speakers on campus. Today was no different. I had been able to secure a ticket to see Kofi Annan last week, and today he spoke about his new book, Interventions. As I got in line about an hour early (tickets are not guaranteed seats-first come, first ticket served), bought his book, and began to begin to live-tweet his talk, I couldn't help but think that this was an amazing first day to start the term. It reminded me again of how happy I am that I decided to attend LSE. Impeccable opportunities to hear from people who have inspired me (or, maybe I've disagreed with some positions). It's academia at it's finest. There is a reason I choose to come to the best social science institution in the world.

At the end of his talk, I was able to meet him quickly during the book signing.

Signed copy

Signing books

 Following the talk by Kofi Annan, I studied for a bit, but then it was time for my second public event of the day.  The Minister of the Economy and Competitiveness for Spain, Luis de Guindos, was given a talk on the Spanish Economic Policy strategy. Having only learned a bit about the Spanish economic woes from prior classes and what I've read in the news, I decided to go to this event. I requested my ticket last minute, and was thankfully allotted one. While much of the presentation that he presented dealt with a lot of graphs (using those math principles already), a lot of it was information that is often overlooked or underrepresented in reports about the Spanish economy.

Luis de Guindos

The highlight of the event clearly came when the questions were asked by the public. I had somewhat predicted that this event could get of hand with all of the security and the current economic woes. As he was responding to a question given the current day decision by the ECB, a woman interrupted the room with a very loud question. She was followed by two others yelling that Spain is for Sale. None of them were escorted out of the room despite the somewhat five minutes of tension. Throughout the rest of his question and answer period they continued shouting remarks as well as many others.

You can read more about the event here: "Spain Does Not Need a Bailout." 

Sorry that this post is fairly short, but I have my pre-semester math course test tomorrow! Even though it's not graded, I want to make a good showing. Stay tuned for more posts--lots of catch-up posts planned!