Integrity. Anna Borgeryd

      When the celebration was over, Sturesson found Cissi and stuck a stack of papers in her hand. It was the printed copy of the department’s winning application. Cissi looked questioningly at her advisor.

      ‘Read here,’ he muttered and pointed to a particular passage of the text.

      ‘Um… fresh perspectives measuring up to the challenges of our time. New interdisciplinary perspectives… students and practitioners from different walks of life.’ They had taken her ideas word-for-word! Cissi was warm with pride.

      ‘Wow, that’s great… that you’re working from that perspective and it succeeded! Congratulations!’ Cissi chose her words carefully. She smiled and gave the application back to him.

      The Professor squirmed and pulled at the collar of his jacket, as if it were suddenly too warm and he needed air. ‘Yes, so, we must promote mobility in research and such… but there are some problems with this, because now we’re really in a hurry. I can recruit a third-year student, but this multi-disciplinary and “different walks of life” stuff… I don’t know, maybe I went a little overboard?’

      He scratched his neck irresolutely. ‘You teach a lot; can you find some undergraduate who has been a mechanic or something, who can do some kind of first publication in the spring, someone we don’t have to be ashamed of?’

      ‘Yeah, okay, I understand. When do you need a name?’ wondered Cissi carefully.

      ‘Now.’

      Cissi was filled with strong, mixed feelings when she walked home, umbrella up to protect her from the rain. When she worked on the application it was understood that she would be part of the project; it was so close to her own research focus – Welfare in a Globalized World. And now they had won! She looked longingly at an appropriate lamppost, but restrained her happy impulse to swing around it theatrically, hollering ‘I’m Singing in the Rain!’

      At the same time, she was angry. It was the impossible deadline that irritated her. It wasn’t the first time that graduate students had been forced to step in and cover for Sturesson’s shortcuts. But it was the first time it had affected her. He had written something that sounded good, without actually being prepared to do it. It was her idea, and she had nothing against helping to get it done, but he could have said something a few months ago, so she wouldn’t have to pull a rabbit out of her hat.

      Luckily, she had a really good idea. She smiled inwardly at the puddle in front of her. And she stamped like Gene Kelly, so that water splashed in all directions. Cecilia Åström had just turned 35, but a stuffy grown-up was something she would never be!

       8

       Economics (from the Greek oikos, house and nomos, law) focuses on the husbanding of resources under conditions of scarcity. Scarcity is defined as a condition in which available resources are limited in relation to the total demand and need for them.

       Cecilia Åström’s introduction to ‘The Development of the Discipline of Economics’

      Vera was dissatisfied after the first few weeks of the semester. It felt more like she was studying mathematics than economics. She was supposed to accept some assumptions and then do calculations. The latter was no problem. It was also important to keep track of decimals when administering anesthesia, otherwise the patient might die or wake up in the middle of the operation, and that wasn’t exactly a situation you could just shrug off with an ‘ooops’.

      Musing about whether or not her studies would turn out to be meaningful wasn’t the only thing that distracted her as she sat studying in her dorm room in the evenings. Stavenius was another distraction. It wasn’t so easy to concentrate on calculating marginal productivity curves when rhythmic bumping and ecstatic cries leaked through what seemed to be a paper-thin wall.

      At first she mainly felt embarrassment and a little curious fascination that she dared not acknowledge. But that was before she realized that the sounds came from dealings with multiple women, not just his blonde girlfriend. It upset her, and suddenly she felt torn about how to respond. Should she pick up the phone and call her old classmate, even if she actually didn’t know Sandra at all? Or maybe not. It was absolutely clear that this was something Al Gore would call An Inconvenient Truth. And faced with inconvenient truths, people react differently. Vera knew that if it were her, she would absolutely want to know, regardless of the unpleasant consequences. But what did Barbie with the expensive handbags want? Vera decided not to say anything, but she wasn’t satisfied. Despite the fact that she had a hard time imagining a woman more different from herself than Sandra, Vera felt like she had let herself down.

      The noise from the next room forced Vera to develop a routine. When it was really intrusive she usually banged the wall with the heel of her hand. But once, when the sound came through the bathroom wall, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was some new voice that sounded like Meg Ryan in the famous fake-orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally. Assuming that this girl wasn’t faking as skillfully as Meg, Vera felt like she didn’t have the heart to interrupt her during what was apparently a fantastic experience. And, based on her observations of Peter’s recent behavior towards a whole line of different women, it wouldn’t surprise Vera in the least if the woman in question imagined a future life together with him.

      Vera was at least learning new words, and she tried to comfort herself with that. It was ‘homogeneous goods’ and ‘perfect competition’ and ‘marginal revenues,’ and she did the calculations correctly and passed her first test. But she was not at all convinced that it was really going to help her understand what was happening in the world. Furthermore, she had very palpable economic problems of her own. The rent for the dormatory was certainly affordable, but she also needed money for food, her student loans and the bus. Vera agreed with her mother that additional student loans were unthinkable, but working part-time at Solbacka didn’t even pay enough to cover her modest expenses.

      The time Adam called and she actually managed to collect herself enough to answer, he had sounded strangely brisk, and she had become nauseated and tongue-tied. Later she would realize that the few things she had managed to say had been lies. Yes, she was fine. Everything would work out, as long as he stopped apologizing all the time. Yes, she looked forward to seeing him; maybe next month? And no, no, she didn’t need any money. In fact, she had already been forced to borrow a little from her dad, Sven-Erik, which was definitely a short-term, emergency measure. She just needed to admit it: She was poor.