In a thoughtful, but peaceful mood

Hey everyone,

I was just thinking about how important it is to be humble in life. I mean, by all means have confidence in what you do, but just remember how lucky we can be in life. Especially here in America, we have some extraordinary luxuries that we expect and are provided daily (such as food and shelter) that are completely unknown in other parts of the world. I feel very blessed and fortunate most of the time.

I got my thesis back from my committee chair with his edits yesterday, he was very thorough which is good. He also said he thought it was interesting, enjoyed it, and it definitely offerred something for people looking to expand their knowledge on politics in Africa. In other words, it was better than I feared. The other member of my committee was unable to return an edited version to me because he had  the birth of his son! Congratulations to him, I told him not to worry as my chair was thorough. He said he would read through it and contact me if there was anything glaring that needed to be fixed. I guess this is a little of a blessing in disguise for me as I am already short on time, the thesis needs to be confirmed and signed off by my committee and turned into the university for the first formal review by friday. Also, my chair had never read a thesis before as a chair so its kind of been a lemming-like experience with none of the 3 of us exactly sure what to do or if we are doing to right. Clearly, I am the one idiot in the history of the program to choose to write a thesis haha, and its increasingly going to be a waste since the chances of me pursuing a PhD shrink by the day. Nonetheless, it has/is been a good experience and I will always be able to say I wrote a thesis. Plus, it literally means that besides this and my last class I am done with the program, so its nice that I won't have to take comprehensive exams at the end. I started working on his edits last night and have worked on them literally on and off all day. I'm about halfway through I would say, so making fairly good progress.

I had my first assignment in my economics class last night, it was an essay exam worth 25% of my final grade. It went fairly well, I'm guessing I will get a high B or low A. Pretty long exam, but not too difficult. The first paper is due on February 25, a week from tomorrow, that I haven't even thought of. It only has to be 7-10 pages though so I'm not worried I can write that pretty quickly now.

Speaking of the PhD thing, I have heard back from a few other places. So far I have received 5 responses: 4 no's from Cambridge, Stanford, UC San Diego, and Yale and a request from Leeds uni for a more detailed research proposal. Leeds was kind of a shot in the dark school because I met some cool guys in Barcelona that lived there and at the time was considering England, but I am not going there. Its just not meant to be. I still am waiting to hear back from Harvard, Oxford, UCLA, UC Riverside, and UC Berkeley. Like I've said, not expecting to get into anywhere and not sure if I would go even if I did but we will see how it goes.

Played Mass Effect 2 a lot last week. In about 4 days time, I logged over 20 hours of gameplay. Great game, nice distraction too. I hadn't played video games in nearly 2 months so it has been fun to get back into one.

And most importantly, I got to spend Friday night-Tuesday morning with the girlfriend, which was awesome. We had a lot of fun, got to do some cool stuff like hiking, playing tennis, seeing movies, going out to dinner, and just enjoy each others company. Already looking forward to my next trip up north.

Anyways, hope all is well out there. Im doing good, getting close to finishing this master's thing so just trying to push through before I have to figure out my job/living situation haha. Take care.