I’ve been at Harvard for three amazing years and it’s truly been one of a lifetime experience.

I’m incredibly glad that through the years I’ve had the chance to take classes to not just merely fulfill requirements but also to learn about diverse topics and themes out there. I study Economics and Statistics here at Harvard but thanks to the liberal arts program at Harvard I have been able to explore some amazing selection of classes! It was very difficult to narrow my list of favorite classes to top 5 but here they are:

Innovation and Intellectual Property (Econ 970): What is innovation and how do we measure it? What is the link between innovation and economic growth? What is the relationship between patents and innovation? What role do colleges and universities play in the innovation ecosystem? These were all the big questions this class sought to answer. I had always been interested in understanding the field of innovation and the impact it has in our day to day lives and this class perfectly summed up some of these interests. By discussing a variety of economics papers written on the field and independent research paper at the end of the semester, I was able to learn a ton of new things.

The Meaning of Life (ER 38): This class was actually one of my first ever classes as Harvard. As I was moving into a new chapter in my life, I really wanted to be able to explore the big ideas regarding what it even means to “live”. By broadly covering the topic of life, death and afterlife, this class provided me with a unique lens to discuss these concepts. Took this class as a part of my general education requirement but loved this philosophy class so much that I actually decided to explore even more through another social theory/moral philosophy class(re: Social Studies 10A).

Social and Political Theory (Social Studies 10a): Before this class, the only things I kind of knew about moral philosophers/theorists was that they love to brood and love to talk about virtue and ethics. I vaguely knew Adam Smith loved to talk about the market economy and the brooding philosopher Kant spent dinner parties talking about duty. Bottomline is, I knew very little. Even then, I was really interested in understanding how these social theories were formulated and how they intertwine with today’s world. By covering themes such as the sources and claims of political power, the origin of rights and the roots of morality, attitudes towards race, the place of women and the structure of the family, and the nature, achievements, and victims of the economic order, I learned a lot about the reasonings these works opened up for discussion. Now, thanks to this class, I’m all set to talk to about the bourgeoisie or Protestant ethic at any dinner party!

Poverty and Development (Econ 1393): This class was the perfect way to learn about the world of developmental economics. Questions such as - why are some countries more rich and others poor? what factors have determined which countries prosper? Which are the root causes and which are the proximate causes of economic underdevelopment? - were some I was looking to explore and this class broadly explored this by covering topics such as education, technology, healthcare, foreign aid, conflict etc. from the perspective of developing countries. My favorite thing about the class was that it not only provided a general overview of the dominant views about economic development and policy but also provided a sense of the most recent research in the field.

Introduction to Probability (Stat 110): The world is replete with randomness and uncertainty; probability and statistics extend logic into this realm. Far too often, we see studies, articles, papers replete with statistics. So, I really wanted to take a class that would provide an introduction to ideas and tools of probability, which are useful in statistics, science, philosophy, engineering, economics, finance, and in general everyday life. In gist, this class explored how to understand randomness and uncertainty through probability models, random variables and their distributions, and thinking conditionally. Once you take this class I can assure you every time someone says “what are the odds” you’ll really have to control the urge to not want to answer that ;)

All in all, I've absolutely loved all the different type of classes I've had the chances to take here; and, even though I'm approaching my last semester at Harvard soon, I'm just not done exploring all the fun classes here(Science and Cooking spring semester I'm looking at you!).