First two days of the new term at LSE

Wednesday

My new academic year starts with a Philosophy of Economics lecture at the somewhat early time of 9:00am, necessitating a 5:45 departure from home (though that did get me to LSE an hour early). The lecture room is packed as this is a course that also applies for undergraduates and many have turned up just to see if they might want to attend it. A large group at the back who chat through out and send constant text messages are presumably not so keen.

At 10:30, the first post-grad seminar in P of E occurs. We discuss Lionel Robbins's Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. When we introduce ourselves at the start of the seminar I mentioned that I had attended Robbin's two year course on the History of Economic Thought in the early 1980s. Of course most of the other seminar attendees weren't even born then. I make a number of contributions to the class, some of which I consider highly controversial but they provoke little debate. Afterwards I had a quick word with the teacher to lay the groundwork for possibly missing a good number of the future seminars. I mentioned how surprised I was that my comments hadn't engendered violent disagreement and he was inclined to agree.

Two hours in the library reading a Barker paper on Copernicanism, then off to see Miklos during his first office hours of the new year. I set out my possible PhD plans and was very pleased to discover that Miklos thinks they are a decent enough set of ideas and that he would be pleased to write one of my academic references. So that is a really excellent development.

In the meantime I have received two texts from Emma who has something urgent she needs to discuss. We finally talk just after I have checked into my hotel in Queensway and she is settled in the hairdressers having her hair dyed. She mainly wants to discuss her plans to do an extra language credit this year and also some developments in her dissertation plans. Also her tutor wants her to consider staying on and doing a D-phil or a PhD!

A quiet evening reading. Mainly the next required material for P of E and Annan's The Dons, my current easy-reading.

Thursday

Working by 6:00 in my hotel room, then off to LSE around 8:00 for a bacon roll for breakfast and some more time in the library. Three books taken out - Drake's Galileo at Work, in which there is a ticket for when Victor Blasco took it out last year - I wonder what happened to Victor?. Also Evan's magnificent The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy and Dierdre McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics.

John Milton is delayed half an hour before the history of science seminar. I sit talking to another "mature" student with a background similar to mine. He is about 40 and has just retired having set up a software company providing training for city traders in things like FRAs. He has a few questions about various aspects of being back in academia and about the course.

Today's "seminar" follows the pattern of last year where John talks for most of the time. Today is an introductory talk and sets out some warnings on various matters e.g. against assuming that words that look like modern equivalents have the same meaning then as now.

Afterwards I ask John about coming to see him and he offers a meeting there and then. So just like the Miklos meeting I set out my PhD plans and again he is very supportive. He is happy to read my comet paper and suggest how best to use it for an application, and he is happy to be an academic referee for me. In our more general talk about the state of PhDs, he confirmed a number of views I have come across related to finance etc. And he also had a number of interesting comments about academic publishing. King's has just had a freeze on book buying as times are hard. LSE, by contrast, has just bought Sardinia House opposite the NAB, so presumably has quite a lot of money at the moment.

So an excellent first two days at least from the point of view of my PhD application