The Halftime Has Passed

I started the school year about two weeks early this time, as I took part in two university-related events before the start of the academic year: the Media & Marketing Career Trek to New York City, in which we visited some industry heavy hitters including Google and Bloomberg, and the International Student Orientation for new international freshmen, in which I participated as an international peer adviser.

The two events were practically antipodes in many ways. The New York trek was incredibly hectic (though great), with the schedule filled to the brim with office visits, resume refinement, and networking. The orientation in Evanston with international freshmen, on the other hand, was very relaxed, and the main point was to ease new internationals into general American and campus life before all the American freshmen come and the madness of overscheduled Wildcat Welcome starts. All in all, a nice start into a new year at an elite college.

As for the college and coursework itself, this quarter I am enrolled in Intermediate Microeconomics, Intro to Market Research, Social Psychology, and my Junior Writing Seminar. Microeconomics is the most challenging one of these, mostly due to the professor, who is relatively demanding but also incredibly interesting and a good teacher.

In social psychology, we learn about the influence of the surroundings and situation on the human mind: How we are influenced by groups, how we act in relationships, etc. Another very interesting course, specifically picked to complement what I'm doing in both of my majors. I may be repeating myself, but this kind of freedom to design one's own education is one of the main advantages of the liberal arts system and Northwestern in particular. NU indeed provides a unique amount of freedom in academic choices.

The topic of the Junior Writing Seminar is "Blood, Sex, and Media" and we spend most of the time discussing all sorts of interesting research studies from the field of communication studies, mostly concerned with the effects of things like violent TV, videogames, horror films, and pornography on people's minds and behaviors. As a long term defender of media and critic of censorship, I am especially interested in the material of this class. And as it turns out, there's more of an influence than I ever would have thought.

In Intro to Market Research, we first reviewed some basic statistics, and now we are working with real market data and generating insights. The course is a little different than I anticipated, but in this age of positivist fascination with data in marketing, any of these skills should only prove useful in the future.

And the rest of the time? I spend it working on those future goals, on internships, on the betterment of campus groups like the International Student Association, and most recently on figuring out how I'll raise $400 again, since I got talked into doing Dance Marathon again this year :) So the main thread weaving through the storyline of the adventure that just passed its halftime stays the same: The life of an active student on campus is one big, unremitting adventure. Sometimes exhilarating, sometimes depressing, but never boring.