“The first time, I looked on it as just helping out my dad,” George explains.  “But it turned out to be a wonderful weekend beside Lake Erie, and we have kept doing it.”   The festival draws all ages, he says, and while the music is acoustic, folks perform their own songs as well as traditional ones.

He downplays the work involved, saying, “The Russian community knows everyone and when everyone likes the idea, then you’re just kind of carried by everyone.”  But he still works several times a week doing all the things needed to make an event successful.

The Russian focus comes naturally.  George was born in Moscow, though his family migrated to Israel when he was 3 years old.  In 1998, they moved to Richmond Hill, Ontario.

He came to Carleton planning to study Law, but Economics grew on him.  He decided to pursue a minor in Economics at the time the economy turned sour in 2007, but eventually opted for a full-fledged major.  As a result, he’s pursuing separate undergraduate degrees in both subjects simultaneously.    He’ll wrap up the Economics degree this spring, he hopes, and plans to return in the fall to complete Law and take graduate work in Economics.   Meanwhile, he has also completed a mortgage agent’s course at Seneca College.

George says a common thread runs through the two disciplines.  “In some sense, law and economics both govern human interactions in social settings.  They both look at the rational human.  They are two paradigms that solve the same problem, since both create predictability through economic incentives and legal contracts.”

He gets a leg up on course work by exploiting such resources as open courseware and the library.  “The standard, basic information is already out there, so I try to get as much of what’s available out of the way before taking a course,” he says.  “There’s less pressure and I can do it at my own pace.  I learn a lot better that way.  Then I can ask the professors about things that come to my mind during class.”

A member of the campus Conservative club since second year, he helped canvass in Ottawa Centre during the 2008 election and has also volunteered in the offi ces of two MPs.  He says he was apolitical in high school, but was drawn to politics by the 2008 election.  “Having political friends sustained that interest,” he adds.

He now believes being active in a party gives youth some ownership over political outcomes.  “Most people feel they can’t really influence things.  But on the flip side, people who are heavily involved are not that big a group, so if certain people decide they want to change something, it’s easy to get into politics.  And paradoxically the small numbers mean each one has more influence.”

He has also canvassed on behalf of the university – speaking to prospective students and their parents at the recent March Break event organized by Carleton’s recruitment office.  “I talked about Economics as an asset rather than a career in itself,” he says.  “You can think about economics everywhere.  Game theory is applicable to everything in life.  That message seemed to really sell to people.”

Certainly, the fourth-year Economics major knows his numbers. He’s been a Dean’s List honoree every year at Carleton, and won an award last year as teaching assistant of the year in Economics.

“Dan is an excellent Economics student,” says Prof. Simon Power, ”and a wonderful teaching assistant — bright, conscientious, enthusiastic and personable.” Adds Troy Joseph, who nominated Dan for the teaching award: “Attendees of his tutorials praise his ability to make abstract and complex economic concepts easy to understand. They appreciate his patient and upbeat approach.”

“Sometimes I think I’m a jack-of-all-trades,” Dan muses, “but I don’t think that’s a problem." The senior Economics major is also editor of In/Words, the university literary magazine.

Dan is drawn to the areas of trade and development economics in particular, an interest he traces back to a family vacation years ago in the Dominican Republic. “I saw the poverty there and that stuck with me.“ He hopes to enroll in graduate school and then parlay his knowledge into policy work on development.

But this was no life-long dream. Dan didn’t think about Economics until taking a Grade 12 class at Ottawa’s St. Pius X High School. “I had a great economics teacher who pushed Carleton a bit,” he says. “He was a great influence on me.” It didn’t hurt that his dad is an economics graduate, too.

In fact, when he came to Carleton, Dan enrolled in English. “I told myself in high school I’d never do math again,” he laughs. But he missed economics and found himself helping his friends in that field figure things out. He signed up for a math course in his second semester, took ECON1000 in the summer, and switched majors by fall.

“I didn’t want to leave English completely, though,” he adds. “I wanted to keep in touch with that side of myself.” So he talked things over with his first-year English instructor, Collett Tracey, who suggested he work for In/Words, the university literary magazine. He’s been an editor for three years, and admires the talented writers who’ve appeared there. “It’s not just for English majors,” he notes.

The magazine is just the beginning of his extracurricular activity. Though not as athletically active as he was in high school – he captained the soccer team and played the sport regionally with the Nepean Hotspurs – he plays intramural soccer at Carleton and recently took up Thai boxing. For seven years, he’s also coached touch football at his former elementary school.

He plays bass in The Red Jets, a band he joined in Grade 10. It’s won a $5,000 development grant, and opened for such acts as the Northern Pikes and Trooper.

And he was the only Canadian among 70 participants last summer at a week-long symposium at Pennsylvania’s Bryn Mawr College on poverty and prosperity. It was sponsored by the Institute of Humane Studies, a libertarian organization. That was part of the attraction: “I’m certainly not a libertarian, but I was attracted to seeing another perspective than mine. And it didn’t hurt that it was a week away, all expenses paid.”

Calling it “the best week for learning I’ve ever had,” he was exposed to experts from fields as diverse as anthropology and philosophy. Meeting students from all over the world was enriching, he adds. “I still keep in touch with quite a few. Just the other day, I discussed econometrics with someone from Nigeria.”

“Sometimes I think I’m a jack-of-all-trades,” Dan muses, “but I don’t think that’s a problem. It’s good to be well rounded. I don’t think I’m there yet, but it’s good to try.”