15, My attitude to English 201.

   Tomorrow we all will write the Final exam. It means that our first English course is coming to the end. There are several point which I want to write about un this post.
   Firstly, blog assignment. It is rather unusual assignment for English course. The main purpose of this assignment was to develop our informal writing skills. The format of blog is very useful because student can really develop his or her writing skills only when student writes about what he or she wants and writes with real pleasure. In blogs we have such an opportunity because we had a list of themes, but, actually, we could write about everything. And it is a big advantage of this assignment.
   Secondly, Grammar logs. As for me, I had very big problems with English punctuation. Grammar log has really helped me to learn from my previous errors. I hope in future I will make fewer number of error. ( But I can't promise).
   Thirdly, Vocabulary log. It is also useful assignment, but I think it can be improved if student will learn, from 20 to 40 words per month, instead of 40 words per several days. Vocabulary tests don't demand much time, so I think teacher is able to conduct at least one test per month. And I think this words should be more useful, but it is a question to students, not to teacher because students decide what words to learn/
   Fourthly, Presentation. This is my BIG fault. I understand it. All school years I was avoiding such assignment because they were "elective", for an extra mark. So, as I understood from my sociology and English courses,  especially after wathching the video of my presentation, my way of speaking and delivering information is a disaster. I should work on it, and I hope I will have some improvements on this direction. The experience will teach me.
   And, finally, writing assignment. One thing that I understood from these assignments is that the correctly chosen theme on which you have many arguments and ideas is a half of the work. Because, on 3rd and 4th assignments I had rather interesting themes and arguments, consequently, I received good mark. The situation with 2nd and 5th assignments were opposite. Of course, O learned from this assignment about many useful techics and patterns of writing, but, in my opinion. the main point was the experience of correctly chosen theme of an essay.
   So, I am finishing my first English course with not the best marks, but that is my fault, and will try to receive higher mark.
   David, thnk you for the course!

14. Old friends

   I wonder when I am meeting my old friends, people with whom I was learning in my original city, and they asking me why I didn't write them from one or two weeks. I always start telling that I have a big amount assignments to write and a big amount of literature to read. Despite it is not always true, they starting inviting me to some meetings. A have been on a one. I found that people hadn't changed during these 3 month of life in capital. They are communicating with the same people who they were communicating during last several years. Maybe this happening because they refused to live in dormitories and decided to rent flats. Futhermore, this happening because they are doing nothing in their universities. Not completely nothing, but they really dislike subjects which they are learning and that is why they don't have many incentives to study them. One thing that I really can't understand is their travelling to original city almost every weekend. I could understand if these travellings were 1 or 2 times per month, as I do, but they travelling 3 or 4 times month. They say that they are missing their relatives, but actually they haven't any businesses to do in university.
   So, many my friends living their previous life. Maybe this is happening because they all arrived to Moscow just to receive a diploma, and not to receive real knowledge. Actually, they agree with his idea. Today most students are studying for the diploma, and many pay money for exams. It is sad but it is our reality.
   So, watching this disaster un Russian educational system, I am really happy to study at our bachelor programm, where you can chouse what to learn and where you know the purpose of your studying.

13. Critique on Argumentive essay.

    Honestly, I am very dissatisfied when I am looking at my draft #1. It is a terrible coincidence that both the first and the second drafts of our main essay we should write at night after deadlines of our calculus homework. Despite David was telling us many times that we should think about our essays and write it before the last day before class, we are all just humans and we can procrastinate almost everything. ( If your essay was complete yesterday, I think you are very strange.
    So, I written my essay in 4 hours of night, and, consequently, it wasn't very good. I started understanding it when I was writing and printing it, but the complete understanding came to my mind when I started reading classmates' essays. Of course, they were not perfect, but they were much better then my one. I wan't to change it's structure and make the paragraphs more logical. I have rather nice argiments and I will try to make make citations as right as possible because it is the main part of our assignment and it tas a big value in mark for this assignment. I am very grateful to my classmates' who pointed me at my mistakes.
    So, now I can say that my essay is rather bad. Of cource, it is not very good to start writing my essay now, but "better late than never". I think good written essay worth sleepless night.

12. I am Jack's developing economy.

 The idea of "I am Jack's" was taken from the movie "Fight club"(1999). I suppose you know it, but I am afraid of being accused of using plagiarism.

  I am Jack's developing economy. I can produce some things and happiness. I need capital and technology to do it. I want to produce more and more, so I collect capital. I want to produce different things, so I study more and more science. I need other economies to exchange happiness and make my amount of happiness bigger.
  I need capital to be happier but every new unit of capital brings me fewer and fewer amount of happyness. Some my economies-friend consume capital more and more so the new capital units don't receive any happyness. But there is big world's tendency to collect big amounts of capital so thet can't stop collecting it and that fact brings big problems to them.
  I can consume and produce. There are different economies around me. Some of them are consuming a lot, others - produce a lot. I suppose these two policies are wrong. Overconsuming leads to big debts which cannot be paid to these economies. Overproducing leads to exhaustion of economies resourses, declining of economies stocks and ecomomy's power. So every economy should produce and consume equal quantities.
  From the birth to the death an economy is trying to develop itself and it may live forever it wouldn't go to the edge points of existing.

 I can say that the concept of comparison a man and an economy and the people society and world trade organizations was more interesting at the moment of it's creating. But it hasn't become so interesting in reality. It's sad!

11. Internship.

  The concept of internships is very attractive for me, and I really plan to use this opportunity in future. But I really can't understand how people can work without getting wage. Money is one of the best human's incentive to work because everyone needs money. ( And don't say that you are the only exception). If you love your work, why don't you get money for it. And the argument about the fact that paid internships are in short supply is very ridiculous nowadays because there are big companies which have part-time job for each hour in a week. Also paid internships can attract more professional workers, and their work may be more useful for employers. Good paid job can also involve students who live on their own, without parents' or relatives' support into internships because internships are alternative way of earning money.
   I agree with Anya Kamenetz who critizes the concept of unpaid job in her article. I can't really find a reason why professional student, even if he or she loves his or her work, can choose unpaid job instead of another one, even if it doesn't make his or her very wealthy. I understand the importance of getting experience which was described by Jennifer Halperin and the concept that this experience is priceless, but I think I would get unpaid job only if it would be very, very interesting for me and at the same time there wouldn't be any other alternatives of paid job. 

10. First little "experience".

    All previous period of acquaintance with economics as a science I was operating with theoretical models of human's or market's reaction on different events. It was very exciting for me to try to create models which were describing people's behavior in different situation. Variety of different models from different sciences create a thought to me that everything can be analysed using rather complex mathematical methods. (It is very interesting theme for discussion but this blog is about another experience happened with me several hours ago and I don't want to focus on a question of mathematical modelling of the world. But I can say that this modelling may be done).
    So, short story about last days. On Saturday Andrei Nurumov from ICEF suggested me to participate in Changellenge Cup Moscow 2012 - a championship of creating a strategy in real bussiness situations (cases). Of course, solving of economical cases is not the same as doing real bussiness, but it is very useful for unemployed beginners. We created team, 4 people. Today, on Monday, championship started. I was reading the exercise for 2 hours, but I really couldn't understand what I should do because it was my first case. At 9:00 pm we gathered in Andrei's room, and after 2 hours of hard brainstorming we find several ways of solving given in case problems. It was very interesting to discuss problems of real firm and try to suggest advice to it. Many people can people can say in this part of blog, "Oh, this little boy finally understood that the real life is not graphs and equalities but work with real firms", and they will be right.  Not the least part of this work was the team. All people were creating more and more ideas, and I understood that I hadn't done anything without my groupmates. Now I understand the importance of professional team because before this event I prefered to work alone. But now I met the problem which couldn't be solved alone.
    This evening of discussion very interesting but now we should work very hard to achieve something in this championships. Of course, we don't pretend for the first place, because our opponents are older and have experience from previous championships. But it will give us rather valuable experience, so I wouldn't regret about participating even if we failed in the first tour, what is rather likely.
    

9. Russians vs. Americans.

   Nowadays many people all over the world say that people from RF and USA are rather similar in their characters and attitude to life. I can't agree with it. In my opinion, they have a lot of differences which formed historically.
   Histocally people from US didn't have their native territory that was why they couldn't connect them with some territory or society. It is their big advantage because if person isn't closed on one territory, then they are free to live and work where they want, especially where your wage will be maximum. Unlike americans russian people were alwats living in small communities where all property were common. This is a reason why russians are not so mobile as americans. These difference can also be explained by religions. Orthodox Church glorifies the tradition of equality and humility, while many people in the USA, as I know, are adherents of Protestantism which spread the ideas of individual development and permanent hard work.
   There is a very bad habit to do all their bussiness near the deadline which is called scientifically "procrastination". This habit can be also explained historically. As I know, american people don't have such a habit, (but I can mistake). This kind of habit is reflected in many russian proverbs. But in the same time russian have a brilliant ability to strain all their power in difficult times. This fact also can be explain historically. Because of climate conditions, russian had only 2-3 months of summer to prepare food for a whole year that was why they had to work hard during these months and then they could relax in long winter evenings. That nation's feature helped them to win the World War II. Unfortunately or fortunatety, amecans didn't have such an experience.
   Americans and russian are two of the most powerful nations in the world. In spite of existing contradictions, they should help each other and all world contries especially in difficult period, like last several years of the financial crisis.
 
   

8. Home, sweet home.

   After 2 months of rather hard study at NES I arrived home in the evening of 27th of October. But the studying process didn't finish in this point. I had an essay on my economics course that I should have written before the evening of the next day. Whole Sunday I was trying to write something interesting in my essay, but it didn't happen, so I uploaded rather bad essay to My.NES. Only after this moment I felt my freedom and, what I was especially happy about, my quietness. I went to my bed with a thought that I shouldn't go anywhere and should read or write anything tomorrow. I slept like I had never slept in dormitory. I was completely relaxed. I can say, I was too much relaxed because in the Monday morning I woke up because of the call of my friend. If he hadn't called, I would have missed meeting with him.
    Next 3 days I was walking with my friends and just talking about anything. I was really happy to talk not about NES, my group or anything connected with studying process. I met with all people who I wanted to see and on Thursday I understood that I should start doing my homework and preparing to my future works. I think a half of a week is rather long period for relaxation for NES students, but all people should have this period. Without it people lose incentives to studying, and they become robots which are studying all the time. But we are not robots, and I think NES administration understands it. I thanks very much it because I don't know any other universities in Russia where such a week exists. All my friends were very suprised when they heard that I had arrived in the town for the whole week. It is very unusual for Russian universities.
   Now I undertand what a big amount of work I have to do, so I became NES student from carefree man again. 

7. Consequences of the first half of the semester.

  Today is the 22th of October. I have lived in new city and studied in new atmosphere for almost 2 months. There are many things that I have learned in this new life.
  I think the most important my achievement was adaptation to new life. I have got used to life without parents and any other people who can support me. I have got used to this fast speed if life, these far distances, these sleepless nights and constant process of studying. I am just starting to use time management because sleepness nights will have very bad consequences for my health.
  The second big achievement for me is improvement of my reading and writing skills in English. Improvement of reading is a consequences of enormous amount of literature which I have read on my English and Sociology courses. Reading for my English course taught me to identify the main parts of the text and answering the questions after each text helped me to understand them in a prover way. Improvement of writing is a consequence of several sleepness nights of writing and correcting my assignments and also of previous 6 blogs.
   I think the most useful thing that I learned during this period was features of English punctuation. The most amazing information was the 'Oxford' comma because we haven't this kind of comma in Russian.
   Writing assignments was the most difficult kind of homework for me, especially descriptive essay. I simply couldn't find the features of person's physical appearance. That is why I had very low marks for draft #2, but after reading David's comments I understood my mistakes and completely rewrote my essay and then had a few higher mark. I read in the list of blogs' topics that we will write argumentative essay. I want to write it as better as possible because I really want to heighten my overall grade.
   In the second half of semester I want to learn how to study other types of assignments and write many blogs on different topics. I think it will be very interesting.

6. Evalution of the small society.

  The small society consisting of inhabitens of room №C202 appeared in the morning of 27th of October. I arrived to the cultural centre of HSE on about 10:00 A.M. without any idea who to live with. All my friends from Voronezh, mostly girls, had arrived at 7:00 A.M. and they were going to get directions to their room in dormitory. I received a ticket with numder 715 and understood that I would get my directions at about 7 o'clock P.M. or even later, so I had enough time to find people who I wanted to live with. And then I saw Gleb and immediatelly understood that I to live with him. He was from Novosibirsk, and I was acquainted to several people from with town, so we started to seach for them. After 5 minutes of searching we founded Anton, then Alex, Telman and Ilya and we all made a decision to live together. My friend from Voronezh gave me ticket with number 400, so my new neighbours and I got our directions much earlier than we had expected. After an hour of travelling to Odintsovo and another hour of registration and getting our bags to the 20th floor we gathered in kitchen and met a question: 'What are we going to eat?' I had a pocket of buckwheat, so I cooked it and we all had a supper.
  After a few days we saw our other neighbours, Suren and Vahe. During the next we had nothing to learn, we were just walking in our area, talking and playing cards in the evenings. We have seen our other neighbours, Suren and Vahe. We were cooking together. If someone were cooking, he was cooking not for only him but for several people. We had two big refrigerators, but used only one, because of not having much food and especially because of the fact that everyone ate not only his food but the food his neighbour. It was very effective: someone cooked and all ate, then another someone cooked and all ate. It was just like a tribal community when everyone shared with each other.
   Then the studying began. From day to day we had more and more homework that is why all of us had a little amount of time for cooking and talking. No one wanted to go to supermarket and cook for everyone. In the middle of September we decided that one refrigaretor would be 'private'. It meant that no one could eat food from this refrigaretor if he hadn't put this food to it. All agreed. After one week 'common' refrigerator became empty, and 'private' one became overfilled. We were spending more and more time studing and were speaking two or three phrases while studing. Our started to look more capitalistic than common, and I think it is ineviatable way over every society.
   Today Anton looked in the empty second refrigerator and suggested to make it private too.

5. Just happiness.

    Twentieth of August. Warm summer day. In the morning of that day I was thinking it would one of those summer days: purposeless walking in the downtown, sitting with one and the same people in boring cafes and  talking about nothing. In those days the one thing I was thinking about was my future life. I couldn't stop thinking about university, new people, process of learning. I was thinking my early life as about something ended.
     So in this mood I went out of my house, walked in the downtown and then about 10:00 pm. As usual my friend Mark, his girlfriend and I went to her house and startes talking. Suddenly, she made a suggestion: 'Let's act a scene. I will be a client in cafe, you, Mark will be a waiter and you will a singer. Sing something romantic for us.' I started snapping my fingers and singing 'Sex bomb'. Their nice scene became nice dance. Little rain started. I was singing and clicking, and they were dancing and kissing. Then were 'She's a lady','She loves you', 'Twist and shout' and 'Girl'. They were dancing under the rain. It was like a scene from a film. They were happy. I was happy too. Maybe it is the happiest moment in life.
     Now I am living in another city, communicating with new people. I have started livind this new life, and .... it is not as good as I have expected. Maybe it is only beginning. And now I am starting to understand how happy and stupid I was. 

4. Individuality vs. relations.

  Success. The main thing that all people want today is success. Almost everyone wants to have a lot of money, expensive cars, houses, holidays on the beach near the Equator and many-many other things which is considered as parts of "good" life.
  There are many ways of becoming successfull. I don't want to write about all them ( and in fact it is impossible). But almost each of this ways can be divided into 2 groups: success with somebody's support and success without any of it. People from the first group are usually very good politicians, because they should making more and more relations, often flatter and lie to many people. They are very sneaky. When they have difficulties, they often need sjmebody's help, because they can't solve their own problems. They got used to solving them by somebody else, not by themselves. People who achieve success by the second way are usually rather intelligent, stubborn and actually less successful. It can be seen especially in Russia. It is very big problem for whole nation. Many clever russias live in other countries, because living conditions in Russia for people are very awful. There are many barriers for people, who want to create their own bussiness.
  In reality, to be successful person should be rather clever and be a good politician to make relations with his/her partners. Onlythose persons can become successful in life.

3. The place that is special to me

  Every person has a place which is very important for him or her. To me this place is camp Artek. Artek is rather old camp. It was opened in 1925 and then became the main camp of USSR. Every pioneer was dreaming about visiting this place. After collapse of the USSR Artek hasn't lost its popularity. The main advantage of Artek is a special atmoshere of equality among children. Every one should wear the same clothes. All people from one squad live in one room (13 people in one room). Some parts of camp's life may seem rather odd, for example, singing rather annoying song when your squad meets another one and repetition moves after your leader in dicso, but these minuses can't spoil the whole attitude to this atmosphere. Also the place which Artek is situated in makes it very special. It is the shore of the Black Sea in semi-island Crimea in Ukraine. There are two simbols of Artek. The first is the big mountain which is called "bear-mountain". Every camper should visit the highest point of it. It is very old tradition. And the second is significant memorial of Vladimir Lenin which can be seen from everywhere in camp.
  I have been to Artek two times: in 2008 and in 2009. The first was one the happiest parts of my life. I was a captain of squad, I met a lot of good people. It was a fairytale. Then, after a year of waiting for a new travel to this camp, I arrived here again and understood..... it wasn't that fairytale. People had changed and I also had changed. Only one thing didn't change. It was Artek. And, I think, it will never change and will always welcome new children who want to touch this unforgettable fairytale.

2. Teens' stupidity.

  Even every teenager 12-15 years old, especially girls, can't stop dreaming about opposite sex. They are trying to hide it from friends or parents, but it is visibly and there is no shame in it. In girls' dreams the man should calm, strong and often without much feellings. He should be inaccessible to be the one, who all girls are dreaming about. There is a similar situatoin in boys' mind: they prefer to think about untouchable girls, whom they will never get an opportunity to talk with. In this age people are rather stipud and can't understand the happiness of warm relations with another sex. And when you meet a kind and opened person, who want to communicate with you, you are starting to compare him with that fictional perfect character, who might don't exist in reality, and making a choise to continue searching for this ideal and reject all attempts of this 'dweeb' to communicate. So, teenagers of both sexes trying to look as much serious and inaccessible as they can.
 Imagine, a boy and a girl who are interesred in each other. They want to talk, but they still can't stop being serious.  So, in this part of story, as in all stories about relationships between two sexes, boy should make the first step, because he is the future man. In process of communication teenagers usually starting to understand the reality of relationships between them. They are becoming more and more opened. They already don't think about their behavior, about their manner of speech. They are becoming who they are. They are just falling in love. And then they both are making confession of love - this should be a logical happy end of the story. But usually this end happens only in fairytales. In reality in these love games there are a winner and a loser. The loser is becoming so opened that winner is starting to compare that week opened person with perfect character and make a choice that this well-known kind friend is not the person, whom he/she have been dreaming about all life. The winner leaves the loser in search of ideal and loser becomes more closed and offended by all another sex. And it becomes bad circle of life. And it continues untill person gets older and more clever and understands that all he/she needs is real love, not an ephemeral ideal.

1. Introduction

Hi, people who came to this page to read my blog. My name is Michael Mozhevitin. I was born in Voronezh, Russia on 24^th of January, 1995 and had been living there for last 17 years. From the first form I have been interested in maths, but in the middle of the 9^th form I started learning economics, and then economics has become my most lovely subject. From that time I have participated in many olympiads.  One year  and a half I was learning without making any efforts, but in August 2011 I took part in Summer Economic School organized by Higher School of Economics. In this camp I had learned about specialized economic site – IloveEconomics.ru – and this site became the mainest site of my last form. I had been sitting in this site every day for 2-3 hours doing economic exercises and writing my own solutions to some of these. After 8 months of studying in this way I became the 6^th in Russian Economic olympiad. Having diploma of this olympiad, I became a student in this bachelor program of HSE and NES. I am really happy about studying in this program. Although it is very difficult, it is very interesting. In the first year of studying in this program I want to improve my knowledge in English and maths.

You might make sense that I am person, who is just studying every second of his free time. It’s false. I love doing sports and just talking with people, but now I consider that economics and education are the most important parts of my life.