Rollercoaster / Course rankings so far

Rollercoaster

It is hard to get used to decreasing income and bank balance. It makes my feelings go up and down. Now I am up again, I think I have enough money until January. Or almost. But I need to get some more from somewhere: but USA does not let me work outside MIT and MIT does not really let me work inside MIT. I could become a teaching assistant, but there are only a few positions available. I cannot become an research assistant, because I am an SDM student. Stupid. I only have 2 courses left in the fall - paying full tuition for them is insane. I need to take extra courses. Or something.
But at the moment money is not the biggest concern. I have to start to study for the Finance exam on Wednesday. No real urge to do so, but maybe I can use one day on it.
Weekend was OK, or nice actually. On Saturday, Biju invited me to AID-meeting. I was the only non-Indian there. AID seems to be very serious NGO doing good work: Indians in USA helping India. Not bad. In the evening, we (I and S) went to see the Penguin-movie. It was so moving, that I shed quite a few tears. On Sunday, we just idled around downtown and Boston Commons. In the evening, I cycled for 75 minutes. Today, I cycled 45 minutes in the morning, then bought flight tickets to Finland (I will be in Finland from 20th of August to 6th of September - I look forward seeing all my friends and relatives.).

Course rankings so far

As started by Yoav in his blog, here is my current ranking of the course I have taken so far (16 of them), in quartiles from most important to least (for me, at this point), also taking into account some aspects of their quality

1. Engineering Apollo, Disruptive technologies, RFID, System Architecture
2. Systems optimization, Finance/accounting, Operations management, Systems engineering
3. Human side of technologies, Innovation in Marketplace, System Dynamics, Air traffic seminar
4. Product development, ERBA, Technology strategy, Thesis Seminar.

I am sure someone will comment this list. Anyway, I have learned a lot during each course, so I cannot say that I have wasted my time totally. Not even during PDD, even though I felt like that during the course. But, after all, some courses have to be in the 4th quartile.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from July to September 2005".