As I placed my body on the seat in the HUB that I would be sitting in for four hours studying economics, I couldn’t help but wonder who would study economics voluntarily. Supply and demand itself makes me want to cry until my eyes dry out. This is a class I must take, and each day I go to class I feel a part of my soul dying.
However, during my studies, I learned to enjoy economics with time. Its complexity and ability to have many answers reminded me of statistics. I wondered when I would use the concepts of elasticity, supply, and demand. Then magically I found multiple uses in my everyday life for how events would shift the market equilibrium. I was fascinated with taxes’ effect on demand, and how it shapes the consumers’ thoughts; therefore, directly impacting the producer.
I now view my time as money, and I can now determine the best use of time. By understanding opportunity cost, challenging questions in my daily life like McAlister’s or Panera can be solved. I have decided that my time is equivalent to $15 an hour. This is because $15 an hour is my hourly wage at work. My order at Panera is typically $8, while my order at McAlister is $13 (their tea is just too good, and I love the 2 for $10). The line at Panera is 15 minutes, while the line at McAlister is 45 minutes. To reach the maximum consumer surplus I would eat at Panera, it is cheaper for my wallet, while also being the quickest option, saving time is saving money.
Economics is not for everyone. I find many of my STEM friends, specifically, my architectural engineering friend, struggling immensely with the style of thought. Economics is math-heavy, but it is also concept-heavy. Economics is the study of scarcity, where you discover why companies and individuals make the choices they make. This style of thought belongs to Liberal Arts surprisingly, as one develops the ability to understand the social science behind the monetary decisions we make.
I was incredibly confused as to why economics was included in the Liberal Arts College at Penn State. Economics is incredibly strenuous when it comes to math and deals with quantitative data rather than qualitative data. David Colander explains why it is important for economics to remain a Liberal Arts degree, “Companies like to hire economics majors from liberal arts colleges not because the students have been trained in business, but because they have a solid background in the liberal arts. What I hear from businesspeople is that they don’t care what a job candidate has majored in. They want students who can think, communicate orally, write, and solve problems, and who are comfortable with quantitative analysis.” This is an incredibly interesting finding, and I believe it to be common to most of the research that I have done on this Civic Issues project, many people are searching for well-rounded employees to join their team. Many liberal arts degrees lead to multiple career paths both related and not related to their studies in college, in the real world they are willing to train you for a specific position, but the Liberal Arts degree proves that you can endure many different challenging fields of study.
The idea of taking economics does not excite me, mostly because I am sitting in a lecture hall of 300 people to learn it, but I understand the value it will add to my education. I will understand how the economy works by studying both macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macroeconomics is the study of the broader economy, while microeconomics is the study of people’s personal decisions and the monetary decisions of a firm. I have realized my education in economics impacts my daily decisions, as I can make wiser choices about the money in my own pocket. Again, the idea of studying economics was not exciting to me at all—but I see the importance of informed decision-making reflect off my work in marketing and PR. I see the company investing in me, and I see their investment in me pay off in their reputation and their sales. By understanding the power of predicting the economy, I can understand what patterns in behavior are going to be trendy so my company can reap its benefit. The ability to analyze data myself is also incredibly important, I can check the work of others and the computer, it adds value to who I am as a PR professional. Studying economics will only ensure that I am a well-rounded scholar.
7 Reasons Why You Should Study Economics | HBS Online
Why Study Economics? | UCLA Economics
Economics Is the ‘Just Right’ Liberal-Arts Major (chronicle.com)