t’is just a quick note from the dismal belly of the international affairs library. there’s a snowstorm here in northeast america and i’m stuck here. but that’s just as well, because i still have so much more to read before i take my last three finals tomorrow and the day after. so my quick note is about how college leaves me smitten so very often. there are just too many smart and charming people moving around this place. they are all provocative in their own ways, but i have realized that the sort i am most fatally attracted to is unembellished intelligence. tonight i had a review session for the macroeconomics exam i’m sitting for on monday (jian wei if you are reading this, why is your macro course a 4000 level one but columbia’s is a 3000?! it’s the same syllabus!). most of us came in armed with a deranged muddle of notes, textbooks, formulas, problem sets and confused questions that should not be asked this late in the semester. myself included, of course– i was in my usual worried flurry of coffee cups and excessively scribbled-upon notes, but i sat beside this guy who came in with just a blue pen. the pen didn’t even work, and he had to borrow another. he did have paper too, but it was one mere sheet of crumpled lined paper which he’d torn out of a notebook and unfolded out of his back pocket. he was blonde, with brown eyes, and had a very lazy european accent. polo shirt. scruffy. incredibly good looking. although the TA was making a few mistakes at the board, he wouldn’t correct the TA, but i noticed that he was deriving the right answers with the appropriate corrections on his disheveled scrap paper. at one point, he leaned over (omg!– smelling of fresh soap) and asked me a question about the liquidity constrained consumer. i answered as best as i could, but midway i hesitated to give it some thought, at which point he answered his own question. so i asked him back another question about the borrower’s behavior in C1 and C2. the girl next to us launched into some textbook answer, but he interrupted her with a real world example that took all of 5 seconds to put into perspective. then he said, when in doubt during an economics exam, just think about what you would do with your own stuff in real life. and he smiled this simple smile. i do love smart real world examples, especially when they come from sparkly-eyed, drawling, scruffy blondes with a cute smile. way too sexy.