It’s been a while since my last post, I do apologise!
I’m sure you’ll all want to know the result of the Broke
Masterchef competition – our team “Dim sham and Impasta” won the prize for the
most creative dish! We were up against four other teams, and we had a limited
amount of ingredients to choose from at the beginning. We chose noodles,
chicken, a lemon, rocket and cheddar cheese, and we were given the surprise
ingredient almonds. We valiantly named our invention ‘lemon chicken with almond
noodle surprise’ (the surprise was cheese!)
It doesn’t sound very tasty (and doesn’t look all that,
either), but we have since recreated it at home and it’s actually rather
delicious! If you’d like to try it for yourself: For the lemon chicken, cook it
as you normally would with some chicken and a lemon, making sure the sauce is
constantly drizzled over the chicken as it cooks. For the almond noodle surprise,
firstly shave the almonds (lots of these), finely chop up the rocket and grate
an incredibly modest amount of cheese (VERY modest). Using a hob that works
properly (our main downfall), cook the noodles along with these ingredients,
and then serve as you please! Also, make sure to use garlic in both parts of
the dish.
Everyone who participated and spectated thoroughly enjoyed
Broke Masterchef, and even though it was a one-off, I’m sure there will be
plenty of other interesting activities to get involved in. My advice would be
just get involved with as much as you have time for, because you will find that
many more doors will open for other opportunities along the way.
Soon after the competition, deadlines arose for about half
of the year’s coursework (beginning of April). There was a huge patchwork
assignment, which included evaluation of theories, data analysis, empirical
analysis, and two essays (one for each macro and micro), and is about 6000
words, although it would be easier to write closer to 8000 or more as there is
so much to cover!
There was also a portfolio for PPIBE (Professional Practise
in International Business and Economics) which included a reflective report on
‘employability’ for the term, a literature review, and a dissertation
presentation and proposal. The word count for that one is around 2500.
The third piece of coursework due in around the beginning of
April was a group project for Quantitative Methods for Economists 2. This
involved heavy use of STATA software, but most of the time we spent on the
project was on presenting the results, doing the maths ourselves to prove we
knew how the software worked, writing up minutes for each fortnightly meeting
we had since the beginning of the year, and formatting the whole document to
make it easy to read. Our project ended up being over 30 pages.
Straight after these were due, the exam revision period
began, and we had a couple of weeks before our first exam. We then had two more
exams, and all three lasted for 3 hours. I can’t say much about the content of
these, but I would strongly recommend looking at the past papers, practising
with them and the tutorial exercises, and asking your tutor for assistance in
the days running up to the exam.
Now, I am fully focused on organising the Rethinking Economics
Annual Conference, which is likely to be the focus of my next blog post. For
those of you who still have exams, good luck! For everyone else, its summer,
and if the sun is out, why aren’t you?
