Its amazing how two people with no television, car, or social life to speak of can spend sooo much money. This semester's fellowship went toward a lot of fixed one time expenses (I can’t help putting economics in everything I do, bare with me, it will pass). Two people born and raised in California have to buy a lot of stuff to get through our first New England winter. Coats, boots, sweaters, etc...the snow is expensive. Luckily most of these expenses are one-time only hits. Next semester will be much more comfortable without the cold weather preparation and health insurance bill.
School has been hectic; I study for most of my waking moments. I've learned that my math skills are near the bottom of the pile in class and have had to struggle through some things that have come easily to my Chinese and European peers. In graduate school you keep hearing that grades don't matter...everyone gets a B- for showing up and doing all the work (a B- is equivalent to a C- in normal school, if you don't get it you have to take the class over again because you failed to meet the minimum requirements)...but since everyone in the program is a bunch of anal-retentive grade watchers we all don't seem to notice. We work for hours on problem sets (I'm not exaggerating, the homework takes 8 to 16 hours of work to complete...per class) that aren't even graded! The motivating factor is the fear that we would have to retake these hellish classes or that we will not pass our end of year qualifying exam that allows us to relax and enjoy our lives again. Needless to say I will be a bad friend and husband for the next semester and a half.
Laura has been doing ok considering I dragged her to this small town in the middle of nowhere. The job situation is still bleak. All available jobs are part-time and pay less then many fast-food jobs from the Bay Area. It must be tough to get a college degree and then not be able to put her acquisition of human capital to work. Our theory for the reason why people don't even call for interviews is that every year there is an influx of new graduate students and professors who bring their significant others with them...all of these tag-alongs have college educations and are looking for jobs that are few and far between. Cornell helps the professor’s wives get jobs as a recruiting technique to attract top professors. The grad students who have been here for a few years have contacts and social networks that notify them of employment possibilities so there spouses eventually get jobs. Also the local New Yorkers network with the people that they grew up with to notify them about jobs before they are generally available, by the time a job has been announced to the general public there are already candidates that have a lock on the position. So the new graduate student spouses are at the bottom of a very small job-ecosystem. It sucks, but the theory seems to hold predicting power.
No comments:
Post a Comment