Always been a B student

Well, grades are in. This means that I now feel confident enough to share with you some of my work this past semester.

A bit of translation, which isn't encouraging in my mind.
No one gets an A+
No one should get a B-

A = Outstanding, 4.0
A- = Excellent 3.7
B+ = Very good 3.3
B = Good 3.0
B- = Pass, but with some unsatisfactory elements 2.7
the rest we won't go into, although it does continue to F.

Situating Ourselves in Complex Settings: A-
Stats: A
Governance State Restructring and Policy Change: A
MicroEcon: B+
Global Governance: Regulation, Adjudication, Dispute Settlement: A-
Managing Innovation in the Globalizing Learning Economy: B+
Total: A-

French, well, French is an optional course and of course, I'm treating it a bit as such -- how does a teacher grade my incredible skills in the ordering of "Les Petits Farçis Du Moment Au Coulis De Persil" or the frequent times I'm asked for (and give) directions or my perfect accent when cursing? Anyway, I got a B.

I'd say the above evaluations are pretty accurate to how I felt about the courses and how much I actually gave in effort. Although, Stats and Micro. Totally should have failed those in my opinion, but then again one can't take a test on "how much knowledge has increased from zero to now?" Although that's what exams and papers are supposed to do, they can't really do that very well for such a steep curve. Or, perhaps the grades above reflect that. I don't know.

I'm really not a very verbal person in large, professional groups so I'm sure I was deducted for low class participation. That's changed a little bit this semester. I figure that if the Asians are asking questions (who are known for traditionally not speaking out in class - it's seen as disrespectful to the professor), I should, too.

Had my one-on-one meeting with the professor for State Restructuring. Remember the paper on prostitution policies of the Netherlands and Sweden? (Aside: the Netherlands is called the Pays-Bas in French - literally the County Below : Nether Lands. Very cool.) Well, I was one of the top 3 papers of our class. Woot woot!

Finally! I needed so badly to be graded and critiqued. Hahahah... No. Really. This was the first time writing papers in over 10 years. Two of the classes involved group work, which is impossible to get actual individual analysis. And my paper for Global Governance "The Global Response to Cybercrime: Standards, Negotiation, National Procedures, and Global Security" got a one-liner of feedback along the lines of "Good work but you related it too much to only the Convention." (Secretly, looking back, I was not thrilled with this paper at all. The intro is HORRIBLE!)

But the prostitution paper, which I really got into while researching and writing it, got good marks from the professor and he recommended I publish it in a journal. Hence, you will not be reading it online yet as I'm sure there are some copyright conflicts on that. The 3 of us who were encouraged to publish will be meeting together to see how we can work with the administration to achieve this. Seriously, with the workload I've got right now there's just no way to do it 'on the side.'

My colleague, Gerrit, published our innovation paper. Sadly, this does not incorporate your individual responses to our survey. In the time allotted we were able to focus only on our colleagues at the other schools within our Global Public Policy Network (Columbia U, LSE, Hertie, LKY, Sciences Po). You can check out the final product here (minus the graphs in our survey results, which you don't care about anyway because I wrote the theoretical framework). Alternatively, you can go over to Gerrit's personal website and download the whole thing - and see my fab pal, too!

You can also check out "The Global Response to Cybercrime" paper here

So, on to bigger and better things!