What a relief! Exams are done and I can stop studying!

Exams in Ireland

Exams in Ireland, and I think in most European institutions for that matter, constitute the bulk of your grade for a course. In most cases, the 2 or 3 hour exam accounts for 100% of your marks! Talk about pressure… I had four exams in the past week, two of them counted for 100%, one was for 70% and the other for 60% of my course grades. Needless to say, I think I got a few more gray hairs and a few more wrinkles around my eyes from studying, on top of my research.

It’s been a huge challenge for us this year: moving the entire family to a foreign country, selling our home in St. Louis, taking out student loans to pay for 100% of our expenses, moving to a new apartment after the first 3 months of living in overpriced hell (make sure you do not agree to lease a place without physically examining it first like we did!), managing a three year old that gets sick all the time because of the Galway water problem that was only announced about 1 month ago but was apparently kept secret for most of the time we’ve lived here. This certainly has make it difficult for me to boycott bottled water lately…

Great Craic

Sorry for the rant, but not all was bad about our first several months here. We’ve had some great craic in the Galway pubs. And, we’ve met some fabulous people from all over the world right here in little old Galway City. I had to say goodbye today to a German girl that shared the same passion, perhaps even more so, for economics as me. Best of luck Fran! I’m also going to have many more goodbyes in the coming days as many of us will part ways. So tonight, I will celebrate with some great craic, pints, and a football match at The King’s Head tonight.

Thanks for your patience during my blackout on this blog for the past several days.

Slainte!

So I’m a poor college student and I’m always looking out for a good deal, especially if it will help me with school work. A few days ago, The New York Times announced they were opening up their TimesSelect premium content to anyone affiliated with a US college or university, i.e. anyone possessing a .edu email address. As you know, I’m at a university just not in the US. So I was a little disappointed. But, I started thinking about it a bit… I remembered that my alma mater gave me lifetime email forwarding for anything sent to my undergraduate address. Woo hoo! Let the hack begin! Here are some of highlights I’m excited about:

• Access to columnists David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Thomas L. Friedman, Bob Herbert, Nicholas D. Kristof, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. Notice the economists in there?
• Preview of The Sunday Times before it’s published.
• And the best feature… The ability to search The New York Times back to 1851.

I presume most universities offer the email forwarding service to their alumni, which means there are going to be a hell of a lot of people switching to TimesSelect for free. That’s a savings of 50 bucks a year! Whether you’re a student, faculty member or graduate with a school forwarding address, all you have to do is click here and enter your .edu email address to get started. Enjoy and spread the word via digg or your favorite social bookmarking site.

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Like last week, I gave another presentation for a different class today. The course is called Economics of Technological Change and covers diffusion (adoption) of technology in a given industry and time frame, among other things. My semester project for this class is to examine the diffusion of solar power in the United States. I am looking at the rate of adoption, the impact solar power has had on innovation and R&D in the industry, effects on economic growth, effects of subsidies, impact on the environment, as well as how solar power has fared with other sources of renewable energy in terms of adoption rate.

The presentation went well considering we were limited to just 5 minutes. There are 48 students in the class so we had to be brief. As I have mentioned earlier, it seems to be a trend in Ireland, or at least at NUI Galway, to present research while in progress, long before the paper is due. Last semester I was hesitant about this procedure, but I have grown to like it and have quickly realized the benefits. For example, the professor has a chance to guide your research and offer suggestions. Dimitri, my instructor, seemed impressed by my topic but cautioned that there is enough material on solar energy diffusion to complete a PhD program. He suggested ways of focusing the research by looking at data for just the past 10 years within the commercial sector, for example. It’s good to air thoughts in front of a group and bounce ideas off others to enhance the focus and I’m much more excited about my project now.

This week, I was able to use Apple Keynote properly on my own notebook and it worked out nicely making for a smooth presentation. I must admit, I felt a little like Nobel Prize nominee Al Gore during An Inconvenient Truth. [grin] I enjoyed speaking in front of the class, it felt very comfortable. I even received some compliments about the slide presentation, thanks to Apple Keynote. Everyone else had the same boring PowerPoint theme, except one student that distributed an outline.

So far, two projects started and another one starting next week with a group of three of us. The semester is really heating up, no pun intended, but I will keep chugging away on the blog posts as well. I welcome your comments and suggestions about my project below.

Photo courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory Credit–Robb Williamson

I presented my research to the other Higher Diploma students yesterday and it was well received. To prepare for my presentation. I used Apple’s Keynote, part of the iWork ‘06 office package. I must say I was very impressed how easy it was to put together a professional presentation. It was a joy to use as compared to Microsoft’s PowerPoint software. As with most Apple products, Keynote was very intuitive and has several built in templates to choose from based on your audience. You can make it look fun or professional, or somewhere in between. The slide transition effects Apple borrowed from OS X are very impressive, but my favorite effect is the reflective picture. If you use iTunes, you know what I’m talking about…how the album artwork appears to be resting on a glossy black table with its reflection in front. It is very easy to add a tables, graphs, pictures, music, videos and even websites.

The presentation view is pretty slick as well. It allows you to see a clock, your elapsed time and your notes on your MacBook, while your audience can only see the appropriate slide. The software is well worth it just for Keynote, but it also includes Pages, Apple’s meager attempt at a word processor. I anticipate the next iteration of iWork (perhaps ‘07?) should have more advanced spreadsheet functions and Apple users may be able to dump Microsoft once and for all. Until then, I still use Excel as well as OpenOffice.org for the word processor and spreadsheet functions.

The downside to my presentation was partly due to Apple’s decision to make a different display adapter for the MacBook than what was used on the iBook G4. When I got to the presentation room, I had my old iBook VGA adapter and to my shock and horror, when I plugged in the cord to my MacBook, it did not fit. Damn you, Apple. That’s like making a new iPod that doesn’t function with all of the old accessories and cables. Oh wait, they did that with the new Shuffle as well. Fortunately, Keynote has the ability to export to PowerPoint, so I just dumped that file on a USB key and used the instructor’s notebook for the presentation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have all the snazzy features of Keynote.

I digress. Despite these problems the presentation went on without any problems. I outlined my paper and proposed direction, got some great feedback from my fellow students and instructors. The idea of presenting a paper while you are working on it is very new to me as an American student. I did something similar last semester and I had my doubts about this practice, but once I presented my topic in front of my peers, I was sold on the idea. By presenting the research during the research, I am able to look at my topic in a whole new light and focus on areas that may not have been entirely obvious. For example, my instructor suggested that I not only look at the economic impact of gasoline taxes, but to also look at the political discourse. Furthermore, he suggested separating these into a few sections and examining opposing views. The class feedback was useful and I also learned a valuable lesson to not trust adapters!

I am very busy this week preparing for a presentation for my research thesis. My topic is regarding the proposal of increasing gasoline (petrol) taxes in the US in order to reduce petroleum consumption, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and slowing the inevitable global warming trend. I am looking at federal and state gasoline taxes as compared to other OECD countries. US gasoline taxes are significantly lower and do very little to encourage conservation of oil. One of my favorite economists, Dr Greg Mankiw, is a champion of Pigovian taxes which are taxes that correct negative externalities. In other words, a graduated increase of the federal gasoline tax will correct the market in order to reduce oil consumption, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and encourage innovative technologies and cleaner alternative fuel sources.

Dr Mankiw’s manifesto has inspired me to research this further. My research will examine the optimal tax at which consumption will be reduced and will study the proposal of offsetting payroll or income taxes so that there will be zero gain or loss in tax revenue overall.

If your head isn’t spinning and I still have your attention. You will see that I am extremely busy and likely will not post again until the dust has settled from my presentation on Thursday evening. I might have to have a few pints and some good craic. See you soon!

Image credit: Wikipedia

The dinner was great, but I think we went a little overboard on the scope of it. The scallops were delicious and the cake was chocolatey but not too sweet. Yesterday I spent most of the day periodically hunching over with stomach pain. Needless to say, I didn’t eat much yesterday and certainly didn’t feel like posting anything on this blog.

I had a meeting with my research advisor today. My project consists of an 8000 word essay on the research of gasoline taxes in the US. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. In addition, I have an econometrics project using STATA as well as a short (2000 word) essay on the diffusion of solar technology in the US. The workload for the semester is finally piling on at a rapid pace. I might have to be brief with some of the posts, but stay tuned…

I have loads of fun content coming your way and I plan to do a weekly Irish culture post. See you soon!

What a relief! I had 5 exams this semester and most of them counted for 100% of my final grade. I’m definitely not used to this kind of pressure when it comes to grades in college. During my undergraduate years, most courses at least had a mid-term exam and often times another one in addition to the final.

I can finally breathe again! So, I’m off to the US for the holidays by way of Dublin for a few days.

I’m in the process of working on three research papers this semester, one of which is a collaboration with two fellow economics students on the trade growth of the U.S. and China and it’s implications (topic changed) to what extent the World Trade Organization (WTO) stimulates economic growth in developing nations. Another deals with the economic performance of Irish Counties using census data. Finally, my third paper will focus on the role of the banking sector during the financial crises of Argentina and East Asia.

I have found several great online resources for writing in a connected world. It’s a great time to be a college student…I wish it were this easy 10 years ago.

• Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) is an excellent resource for formatting and style guidelines; also includes discipline-specific guidelines.
• Writely, (recently acquired by our good friends at Google) is an excellent online document collaboration tool; work on a group assignment with ease!
• Renowned Harvard economics professor, Greg Mankiw, has a nice post on his blog aimed at economists writing for a general audience - useful for students of other
• disciplines as well.

Feel free to comment with your suggestions for helpful writing resources.

Well, back to my papers…

As you may have read previously, I am a postgraduate in Economics at NUI Galway. Unlike many international students, my wife and I are not ’sponsored’ by a school in the USA. Therefore, we do not have the support, financial or administrative, that most other students here are availing. After six weeks of school, I finally have time to take a minute and reflect on the process of applying for and attending a postgraduate study program abroad.

It all started back in early spring of this year when my wife and I made the decision to apply to NUI Galway. She applied for the Masters in Medieval Studies for 2 years and I applied for a Masters in Economic Science in Policy Evaluation and Planning (say that 5 times fast) in the Cairnes Graduate School. We sent all the necessary materials and awaited their decisions. Meanwhile, we completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) as we have always done in the past to obtain Stafford Loan funding for tuition and expenses. The FAFSA is easy enough as government applications go, just make sure you have all income tax information for both you and, if necessary, your parents. The application was a success and we received notice that our Student Aid Report (SAR) was ready and would be forwarded along to NUI Galway electronically. The idea here is once the school receives the SAR, they determine financial eligibility and expected family contribution, then certify the amount of loan monies that are available. This information is sent back to a student loan company such as Sallie Mae for approval. The loan is disbursed and everyone is happy. Easy, no?
So far, so good…or we thought. (more on this later)

The application process for NUI Galway on the surface was deceptively simple on the surface. They have a new process whereby all applications for postgraduate programs must be completed online. Simple enough. You submit your info, send in your letters of recommendation via overnight mail (make sure to get tracking information) and presto, your application is rolling along. The university advises a decision will be made 6 weeks after the closing date (deadline) of your program. Presumably, they wait until all applications are received, then proceed to the decision-making stage.

6 weeks came and went; no decision.

Around the end of this May, my wife received a verbal acceptance from her program director via email about 6 weeks after her program’s closing date and she was ecstatic. We were actually going to go through with our crazy decision to uproot our family (did I mention we have a 3 year old son?) rent or sell our home, and move to Ireland for 2 years. I was still awaiting a decision for my program, however we knew that this was the opportunity of a lifetime and weren’t going to pass it up. We started making all the preparations for our big move by selling our car, finding a tenant or prospective buyer for our home.

Well, that’s all I can bear to write about the subject for now. Stay tuned for the rest of the story…

The famed voice of Bart Simpson visited NUI Galway today in an event hosted by the Lit & Deb Society, the university’s debate organization. Ms. Cartwright entertained the students with her many voices while speaking about her humble beginnings from Dayton, Ohio which has led her to much success. She was well received by the students and promised to consult with the writers of “The Simpsons” to organize future visits to Ireland along with the rest of the cast. Cartwright spoke of the forthcoming The Simpsons Movie due in theatres July 2007.