Teddy Bloggie Blog Blogging

I went to Davis yesterday for a visit with the faculty and graduate students in the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics. The visit was to last from 10am to 3pm, each of the 7 faculty members spoke to me for about 30 minutes, with an hour and a half for lunch with three graduate students.

What stuck me immediately was how non-hierarchical the faculty and student relationships seemed. I arrived just in time for Friday morning donuts, a weekly affair that gets the graduate students, faculty and staff together. A few minutes after 10am, with a chocolate old-fashion in hand, I sat down with Professor Edward Taylor. I spoke about why I wanted to go to graduate school and he showed me his work in Mexico and his computer modeling that explained rural land use after NAFTA. He was beaming, excited with his work and told me about the opportunities of doing research work in Mexico or in China through the AgEcon department. Like most visits of the day, we went over the allotted 30 minutes. I went on and visited with Professor Farzin, who shared my view that economics needed to take into account, social, political and anthropological conditions before concluding what constituded a workable policy. Prof. Farzin's experience in the World Bank, doing computer modeling, showed him that cookie-cutter solutions do not work. Prof. Chalfant's the Chair of the department and told me a bit more about the M.S. program's courses and how they differed from the PhD courses. Prof. Rozelle was next on my schedule. He's a specialist in Chinese rural economies, and we had a great time talking about how quickly political decisions in China gets translated into actions, no bureaucratic red-tape or democratic debate stands in the way of far-flung projects like the three-gorges-dam or the reforestation of Northern China. There have been many graduate students advised by Prof. Rozelle who have gone to China to do research - something I'm interested in doing.

Lunch was with Rocio, Caroline, and Hiro. Three graduate students from Spain, Canada, and Japan, respectively. They told me that the first two years of coursework was very intensive and prelims and orals were stressful and it was sometimes necessary to take them over. But the main impression I got was that they liked studying at Davis, they liked their advisors and enjoyed being TAs and research assistants.

After lunch there were more visits with Prof. Smith, Goodhue, and Boucher. Smith is an econometrician and a finance guy. He plays rugby. Prof. Rachel Goodhue, the only female faculty member I met during my visit, was the Gradate Committee Chair. Basically, she heads the committee that decides whether you get in - or not. She told me that next Wednesday would be the planned meeting to discuss applications and that she had not looked at my file prior to our meeting. She's a Berkeley grad I think, and I know some graduate students at Davis find her intimidating. She seemed like a Berkeley professor, a little more serious, a little less smiling and laughing, so in a Davis environment maybe she does come off a bit intimidating but I didn't think so. I thought, "Okay, next Wednesday. I'll call next Friday to check in." She asked me why I chose AgEcon instead of Economics. I replied that I thought AgEcon would be more applied. I could learn my modeling and theory and get on with applied research work. Plus, right now, I think I want to focus on Development Economics and AgEcon's better suited. My final visit was with Prof. Boucher. We got to talking about Brazil and Portuguese. Which led him to tell me a story of how he was invited to do research in Mozembique while in graduate school because he was learning Portuguese on a fellowship. I had all my questions answered by this point and we just chatted about what other classes should be taught in the department. Theoretical courses on incentives and contracting and asymmetric information was at the top of that list. During my visit with Prof. Boucher, Prof. Goodhue came in and asked me to see her when I was finished. So I headed up (or was it down?) to her office a bit past 3pm.

I thought perhaps I'd forgotten something in my application. She invited me in. "We had an informal meeting," she said. "And we decided to offer you a letter of acceptance, the fee remission and TA or RA-ships for the next two years."

Wow. In my dumbfoundedness I said, "You can do that?"

Prof. Rozelle's office was across the hall. He smiled, characteristically, and congratulated me and told me he was impressed.

So starting in September, you'll probably be able to find me in this building.

It's the Social Science and Humanitites Building at UC Davis. People there call it a maze and I can see why... there are doors and halls all over the place, unintuitively scattered, so bring a compass.