Thursday at LSE

Another early start to catch the 6:45 express coach and back at LSE by 8:30. More brainstorming in respect of my dissertation in the library for the first couple of hours today. These two sessions this week in the library have perhaps been the best work I have done for a few weeks. Loads of good ideas.

Then across to King's for 11:00. Some admin confusion, but a few of us get there on time. Caroline raises some criticism of my role with Leonardo, saying that apparently Miklos has been very critical of Leonardo's quality of English and the bit of help I gave him last term was a really bad plan - but this does raise the question: how does she know about this?

John Milton has 15 years of teaching this course. He hands out a 20 seminar programme which looks great but of course we can only do half of it. Now the structure of the entire course is so much clearer - and it looks very good without the George Seminars. The reading list given out is really excellent. We have to select 9 out of the 19 seminars avaliable and this seems to just about go ok. These choices affect the exam so I was keen to ensure that some areas I want to cover where in the list. So seminar 8, the Reception of Copernicus is in, as is number 10, onKepler. But John doesn't intend that people present papers. Instead, on the basis of the way things go in the rest of the seminar, it looks like the seminar could be a rambling affair. A shame given how good it looks on paper

Lunch with Leonardo and Victor. Victor can't get anyone at LSE to give him a reference for his PhD applications as he has offended too many people already. He is applying to loads of places - all non-UK (for financial reasons). This gives me some pause for thought about my ultimate decisiuon on PhD applications. I have thought of Cambridge as choice 1, UCL 2, Imperial 3, and LSE 4. But I don't have a huge list in mind.

2:00 and off to the Philosophy of Economics seminar. Much to my surprise, I am remembered by someone from the one seminar I attended last term (and that was week 1). My plan is to try and attend as much of this seminar as possible and use it as subject 3 to finish my MSc next year while hopefully working full time. Hadn't done the reading for today but that didn't seem to matter - I still made a couple of contributions. Talked to Richard Bradley, who runs the seminar and who is the head of the Philosophy Department, at the end - he is pretty happy for me to attend on an ad hoc basis this term. Next week we are doing decision making under uncertainty - one of the topics in P of E that I ought to know alot about.

So not a bad day today - I suspect Thursday will be my main day at LSE this term