End of a Quarter and New-Look Twins?

I handed in a final on Thursday, thus capping my first quarter of graduate school. They sure pummel you with information over a 10 week period. I think my first day of classes, it was near 90 Farenheit, now it's safely below freezing with snow everywhere (and hopefully more to come). It feels good to be done and I can definitely look back on a hard learning curve; not just in the amount of new, complex information that I had to be able to wrap my head around, but also in how to think as a graduate student and how to write and do assignments. It's a surprisingly significant step up from even honours-level undergrad work. I feel confident though that I can survive another quarter and, hopefully, improve. I've already gotten the final grade for one of my classes and I'm very very happy with it. So now, a month of private, unstructured research. While it's a nice break from the regimented routine of weekly coursework, I think it's pretty important that I'm able to channel a sufficient amount of energy and discipline into this next month. If I were to get a grant or fellowship to go do research for 6 months in some archive in Yaroslavl, I would pretty much be researching in this unstructured style. So I guess this is career practice, really. At least you can't spend too much money in the library.

Joe Christiansen, who for my money runs the best blog on the Star-Tribune website, has posted his (as of December 7, 2007) potential Twins lineup for the 2008 season. It's worth a look I think. Don't bother with the comments though. Some interesting thoughts to chew on there. Ciao for now.