The last day to withdraw from Fall term classes is Nov. 7th. I know this because I finally got around to flipping the calendar page here at work. The picture shows a campus under snow. Odd to think of snow just yet while the temperature remains, during the day at least, in the double digits...but I digress. Thinking of withdrawing from classes brought to mind that I haven't had my economics dream for quite a while. Perhaps you may have had dreams like this? I am about to graduate and realize to my horror that I hadn't properly withdrawn from an economics course--taken on a whim--and am therefore faced with not only an F on my transcript but am not eligible to graduate. I would wake from this dream in a cold sweat and, it would take a good 5 minutes or so for me to convince myself that I was in no danger of not graduating because I had never signed up for an economics course. Well, not since highschool and that experience was enough to tell me that the pseudo sciences just weren't for me. I'll expand a little. In my highschool course, 60% of our final grade was based on a business 'game.' That is, grouped in pairs, our teams were to create and run a business. We were to study market forces and then make decisions that would (hopefully) increase our profit margin. Now my partner N and I had similarly ignorant views on the world of economics. My first question to the teacher was 'Why do we need a stock market?' His answer, as I remember, was not very satisfying. Anyway, my partner and I set about creating our business and making decisions. Looking around at what other groups were doing, we noticed them making charts, doing statistical analyses and the like. We decided on an alternative approach. We brought in a deck of cards, a pair of dice and a quarter. Yup. Our business was run on chance and luck. Some days we'd even dress up like fortune tellers. Why did we do this? We were brats. Plain and simple. As well, however, we were curious to see how we'd do. Much to our teacher's chagrin, we won the game and were awarded an automatic pass in the class. I must admit to having felt a bit guilty for not putting in all the work that the other students were doing. On the other hand, however, it did teach me/reinforce within me a healthy skepticism for:
a) teaching methods;
b) economics and other quasi/pseudo sciences;
c) what is deemed to be important;
d) business 'ethics,' and;
e) so-called experts (in any field).
This type of learning has proved invaluable.
2 comments:
Oh right: and this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I su=igned up for that f-ing economics course in first year, didn't drop properly and ended up with an incomplete (read: 0) on my transcript which totally sunk my GPA and resulted in smarmy comments from the MA committee before I was accepted from my Masters? Nothing at all right???
or the fact that dad actually DROVE me to take the economics course in the first place (which I attended about 15 times before missing the midterm and deciding "hey, I am done with all that jazz") and paid $80 for version 6 of the textbook which I endeed up carting around for some 7 years until I abandoned it in my folk's home (it's spiritual home, when you think about it).
Yeah, it's a bad dream alright. Worse, it's my life.
Course, you may not remember it exactly that way....
are you really the one to blame? shame...shame on you clare. I've been stuck with that stupid economics nightmare ever since I graduated and I could never get my head around why I was having it...seems that now I know.
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