Fall Quarter, My Masters Begins

An aerial view of the University of California at San Diego campus, my home for the next two years

After my trip to Mexico City I flew back to Tijuana, which is across the border from San Diego. Flights within Mexico are typically cheaper from Tijuana's airport, and it happens to be accessible from San Diego. There is actually a border crossing from the US side directly to the Tijuana airport. On my way back from Mexico City I also stopped over a a friend's place in Tijuana for the night; I'll have to make more trips down over my next two years in grad school.

Speaking of grad school, I was all set to start fall quarter in late September. I haven't posted in a long time, so this winter break I'm catching up. I had originally arrived in San Diego for a six week summer prep program, but my real classes didn't start until September 28th. Now that I'm done with the quarter I can look back and reflect.

Overall it was tough; not impossible, but certainly a heavy workload. I managed some free-time to get out in San Diego during the weekends, but during the week I mostly kept to the campus area. It helped that I wasn't working and had no other commitments. Several of my classmates worked part time, and others even had young children to look after. For example, a Japanese student in our program has three children under the age of 10. If I ever felt stressed out, I just thought of him. If he could keep up classes should be easy for me!

Although classes weren't exactly easy, I think I did well (I'm still waiting on final grades). Everyone in the program was required to take Microeconomics for Policy Management and Quantitative Methods (QM). QM was basically statistics. Next quarter is QM 2, in which we have to learn a program called STATA, and dive into regression analysis. From what the second years have said, QM 2 is a big step up from the fall class.

Steph Haggard, one of my fall quarter professors

In addition to the two core classes, all of the International Affairs students (the program has two tracks, IA and Public Policy) had to take a class called Globalization in the Asia Pacific. Our program focuses on East Asia and Latin America, which is part of the reason I chose UCSD. I have experience living in several Asian countries and want to beef up on my Spanish too. Overall some of the Globe class was a review, although I enjoyed most of the lectures and readings. The class was taught by two professors--Barry Naughton and Stephen Haggard--both of whom are well-known in their fields.

My fourth and final class was Politics of SE Asia. It was an elective that counted towards my specialization, International Politics. Since I've traveled around the region quite extensively I felt it would be easier than starting fresh with a new subject. Overall I felt the four classes were a good selection for the first quarter. I spent a lot of time on the Globalization readings, and Microeconomics was difficult, but QM wasn't too bad, and the Politics of SE Asia had comparatively less work.

Next quarter I'll also take four classes: QM 2, a combined Finance and Accounting course, Policy Making Processes, and International Relations of the Asia Pacific. One of my quarters, either first of second year, I'll need to take five classes, but I figured best to get comfortable here before I dive in head first. I graduated from undergrad in early 2011, so I needed to shake off some rust and adjust to student life again.

In the next post I'll detail more of my life outside school and talk about the city of San Diego. Thankfully I have lots of time on my hands over the next couple weeks, so you won't have to wait nearly as long as the Mexico updates!