There Goes the $$$

We got dropped from Fed Challenge. Whereas last year we got second place nationwide and lost only to Harvard, this year we lost in the preliminaries this Thursday to the fucking College of New Jersey. Now, I want to ask – who the fuck is the College of New Jersey? I’ve never even heard of these guys and they apparently beat us to go to the semi-finals. I suppose we had some pretty radical ideas: we were trying to be socialist, gain more power, and try to start our own TALF-esque program for small businesses because we thought what the government was doing wasn’t cutting it. It was either go big or go home, and unfortunately, we ended up going home flat on our faces.

Although it was disappointing we didn’t even get past the prelims, this isn’t all bad news. No more late nights in the Stern basement, no more poring over economic reports and speeches by Bernanke, and no more having to cut time out of my studying to do Fed Challenge (note: I didn't cut time out of partying -- BAM!). Now I can actually focus on school since I probably spent an average of 20 hours/week working on that stuff, and that doesn’t include the extra individual reading we did to keep up with current data.

I think I might have overextended myself this time around because I got my ass kicked by the previous rounds of midterms. I didn’t do so badly that I wanted to sniff coke and forget all my problems, but also not as well as I had hoped. I was especially frustrated because there were a lot of easy problems that I should have gotten right. I mean, who fucks up on comparative advantage in macroeconomics? Apparently, I did, and I paid for it badly.

Perhaps I’m not as smart as I thought I was – or maybe in high school I didn’t care as much. Can I keep up with my studies when I was doing so much extra work? But then the question I need to ask myself is, why can’t I do this shit? There are plenty of people out there who are able to not only keep up with their studies but also have a job, hold positions in leadership, and do their own crazy stuff on the side.

Time to study for round two of midterms. I just got my last midterm back this week but I already have a midterm on Monday. These exams just never seem to stop coming.

-Emoinacloset

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UPDATE: Apparently, our advisor agrees with the general sentiment among our members -- "Who the fuck is the College of New Jersey?" Unfortunately, Tik won't let me post the e-mail, which was probably a good idea on his part. I'll just have to make do by telling you guys about it.