Here is the mail I received today morning. I hope Zayed will soon join us in a SKYPE conference sometime this week. Now have a look at this slightly edited mail.
Dear Sir,
I know you told me to keep you posted
with works right after orientation but certain developments prevented me from
doing so. I hope you will keep this from my parents but I had high fever for
the first two weeks of college but everything is fine now. I did all of my
classes in that feverish state and never skipped a single class. I think that
has made me even more confident in what I am capable of. Now I'll first tell
you about the academic side of things. The past two weeks have been extremely
eventful for me and you'll see why.
This semester I am taking Contending
Political Ideologies (A 200-level Political Science course where we discuss the
development and evolution political ideologies from their conception to the
present. So far we've done Liberalism and are now working on Conservatism but I
would really like to see what our Professor has to say about Socialism.),
Introduction to Philosophy (So far we've covered Plato's Apology, Aristotle's
Metaphysica, Descartes' Meditations and a re now doing Van Inwagen's
Metaphysics), Single Variable Calculus ( which is basically what we've been
doing since class 8 but with a ton of theory. I need to take this course so
that I can take intermediate Microeconomics in the Spring Semester) and my First-Year
Seminar on London and Multiculturism. This is a writing intensive course and
the professor in this course seems to have a very high opinion of my abilities.
We've become quite close and she even invited me to her house during Fall
Pause. But those are just the boring details, one of the most interesting
thing that happened last week is that I declared my major! I
got to do so because I had credits from A Levels for the introductory level
courses and I should them I was making sufficient progress toward the major
because I have a Calculus class this semester. It was apparently the
fastest in the Economics Department's history and I took the opportunity to
show both my adviser and the department chair my research proposal. The
Department Chair, Prof. Farrant is a very interesting man who sometimes reminds
me of Farzeen Bhaiya when it comes to passion for the subject, approved of it
right away and said I should make this a 300-level independent study instead of
a 200-level one which basically means that I'd get more priority in utilizing
the college's resources. My adviser, Prof. McPhail was equally enthusiastic and
spoke along your lines. He said that this could easily be a career making
venture and my age was definitely what gave me the advantage over most other
economists and the novelty of the topic and the location of where I planned to
do this research immediately blocked off potential competition. I am also
looking into several institutes such as the Becker-Friedman Institute and the
Santa Fe Institute, on his advice in order to look for openings into workshops
that would help me rub shoulders with the who's who of contemporary academia.
At the same time, I dropped my name in the roster for research assistants for the spring semester so that if
any professor is looking for an assistant, I might get a chance to work with
them. All of this is preparation for the chance to get published before
graduation which will be a huge boost for grad school and a Research Masters’
program.
This Monday, my Seminar Professor recommended me to be a writing
tutor at the College's Writing Center which is basically a sort of peer
reviewing post where I will get to help students revise their papers and work
with Professors as a Writing Associate. I had the interview yesterday and now I am
patiently waiting to see if they take me. If they do, I begin training from the
Spring Semester and will start work from Fall 2017 (it is a paid position so
that means I won’t be making sandwiches at the campus cafe anymore. Thank
God).
Sir I'd like to thank you at this
stage but I already know how you would take it. So I want you to know that I am
definitely not straying from that goal which we set back in Dhaka and after
everything is done, I will definitely return. I have become part of a group of
friends and I do enjoy their company so I won't say that I am unhappy here
socially. In fact I'd rather say I enjoy a little too much during Fridays and
Saturdays and I am planning to not do so on Saturdays because that puts a lot
of strain on my Sundays for all the homework due on Monday. I have all of my
classes on Monday and no classes on Tuesday.
If had to give any advice to the
students of your class, it would be this: read as many complicated books as you
can from authors from around the world and different eras. I am attaching a
link with this email containing an article that lists all the major texts used
in the top colleges of the US. Something tells me that you may look this with
derision because it does not contain many Eastern names but that's fine, you'll
still have some use for it I believe. And I almost forgot to mention, my
adviser specializes in economic history and is currently working on texts which
pertain to economics from across different cultures. He had very little idea
though about the Eastern and near-Eastern traditions of economic thinking and
as such he was very interested about my half-complete research paper and the
notes I took on Al-Muqaddimah. He wanted to see both and thought of these as
new leads to what he's working on. I'm just glad I got to build a rapport so
early on and I am doing so with as many of the economics department faculty
members as I can. Tomorrow I will probably visit the Professor who specializes
in Econometrics. I will probably declare my second major in maths this time
next year. If any of your students wish to study economics at the undergrad
level and are truly passionate about it (because Prof. Farrant actually said
that he could sniff out passion) they should definitely consider it. And online
I think there is a list of schools that give out Davis Scholarships and I
noticed that I got rejected from all of those who do. You should be wary of
these colleges because most of their Internationals (who are seeking financial
aid) are UWC students. Dickinson on the other hand isn't a Davis School and
neither was Villanova. Although Grinnell was. As was U Chicago. I should let
you know that the U Chicago dream hasn't died yet and I am definitely going to
give it a shot at grad school.