Halloween is over, no more traveling until Xmas (except maybe a short wknd dash to NYC before that, if I get all my HW done in advance). I am going to be the nerd I never dreamed of being, for at least the next few months. I thought I was working hard enough, but wasn’t. Grading on a curve. pfft. whatever happened to judging people on their own individual merit and fabulousness? Well, I gotta play the game and swim twice as hard to keep up than I thought I did, in math anyway.

Yesterday I came back from the smallest, most un-glamorous academic conference I’ve ever been to (OK, it was the 2nd academic conference I’ve ever been to: http://pinkyracer.livejournal.com/6269.html ) but there were some awesome papers in the proceedings, and even a few good presentations. I am really excited about this one where this guy is trying to develop a more accurate way of measuring a country’s openness to trade. But I won’t bore you with the details here, you can read all about it:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:C0oxFFzDc-MJ:www.cbs.curtin.edu.au/files/squalli_wilson.pdf+%22a+new+measure+of+trade+openness%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Our paper was well-recieved, and I’d be overjoyed if it gets published in the journal. It’s so funny hanging out with all these teachers, being a student. I know I’ll teach again, but not until I get a lot more work experience, and try some things I find challenging, like consulting. OK, eat, then more HW…