My year at VCU: A Success Story

Last fall I started my first year as an MA student in Economics at Virginia Commonwealth University. I was excited but I was also scared shitless. I did not know what to expect, didn’t know what was expected from me and was worried senseless whether I would be able to chew what I had bitten off. After all, I was enrolled in a program that promised to be quantitatively rigorous (and it didn’t fail to deliver) and despite my earlier bragging about my aptitude in math, I didn’t know whether I would be able to stomach the courses that were coming towards me as giant steamrollers.

The smart people of my department decided that my high school math background would suffice and got me enrolled in a graduate course of Mathematical Economics (which I aced, of course). The same people decide that I take Econometrics right away, even though I had told them upfront that I had never had a single course in Statistics before. “You’re a smart girl,” said my department head, “you’ll figure it out…” My Econometrics professor, however, wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea and didn’t conceal his “grave concerns” about how hard it was going to be for me to pass his course.

I was amazed at the amount of faith that my department had in me without really knowing anything about me or my aforementioned quantitative skills. Despite the fact that my eagerness to succeed could be spotted from a mile away, I wasn’t sure whether inspiration alone was enough to meet the expectations that both I and my program had. Or so I though…

As I was soon to find out, motivation does, actually, go a long way. I was determined to succeed, and not only so that I would prove the doubting professor wrong (no one tells me what I can or cannot accomplish)… After all, one of the reasons that I gave up Brandeis was lack of challenge, whereas here it was, the challenge in all its glory, staring me in the face and sticking its tongue at me…

I gave myself a one month crash course in Stats, spent a ridiculous amount of time on every small detail of the course, obsessed over every problem set and ended up passing the course with flying colors and a perfect score. As a side-effect, I also developed a hopeless crush on the guy and the subject matter itself, which only made me want to try harder and delve deeper. I also did well in theoretical courses, learned to work with a couple of kick-ass stats and math software, worked as a graduate assistant for the Econ department and befriended my professors.

I had never worked this hard before, and I was happy.

The end of my first semester was my tipping point – I no longer needed to prove anything to anyone (including myself) – it was no longer about fears, insecurities, grades and program requirements. I was simply hooked – this was something that I could do for the rest of my life. In fact, I would be hard pressed to think about anything else that would make me as happy as what I’m doing now - studying math, working with data and learning about different estimation techniques. And at this point doctorial pursuits are becoming inevitable necessity, so to speak.

The funny thing is – if this time last year somebody told me that I would be where I am today, I would simply laugh at them in disbelief. And yet, here I am, two semesters later, with a tremendous sense of accomplishment, yet humbled by the fact that there is so much more to learn! Even though this past year has been the most challenging, exciting and rewarding experience, I do know now that this is only the beginning…