Skip to main content

Connecting The Dots


Thus far, we have blogged about organizations, transfer prices, teams and opportunism. I can see that most of my posts have involved my experiences in late high school and throughout college. They have really required me to sit down and think about how my experiences have contributed to where I am today. Additionally, it forced me to be honest with myself and evaluate if I was happy with how I have contributed to organizations, how my work ethic has changed, and ultimately, if there are things that I could have done better. As a senior, I find that this analysis is beneficial as I reflect upon my time thus far at the University of Illinois. Ultimately, analysis through an economic lens has made me realize I am glad that I have had a variety of activities and experiences that I will carry on into the future.

Aside from addressing the prompt, I can see that each post has tied to a bigger theme. Though it may have not been obvious as I was writing the posts, I can see that transaction costs play a large role in our daily lives that I had not realized before. It is important that I am able to completely understand and grasp the themes that we have discussed in class to the point that I should be able to fully connect blog posts to the themes even when it is not specifically stated to do so in the prompt. This would be a sign of mastery. I think that as the semester continues and we write more blog posts that these themes will become more apparent to us as we analyze our experiences from different perspectives based on new prompts and connect them to the themes. Additionally, reading my teammates’ posts and commenting on them has provided insight onto how their stories can relate to themes differently than my experiences.

My process has changed quite a bit. Since I come from a STEM background, writing in this format has never been formally taught to me and I initially felt quite out of my comfort zone. Mainly, I was worried I would not answer the prompt correctly or would not show a thorough understanding of themes and concepts. I have started to read the prompt early during the week and kept it in mind before attending class. Then, I jot down ideas throughout the week as they come to me. I believe this has helped me have a better idea of how I want to attack the prompt and has made me less anxious about writing them.


I would like to see myself provide more detail in my posts. Further, I would like to be able to cohesively tie themes together when possible. Also, I should start including information from the excel homework into my posts so that I can better understand the material. This would allow me to reflect on my posts before taking the quizzes.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 15, 2017 at 2:37 PM

    The writing in this post is the best you've produced so far in the class. It was an interesting read.

    However, it was submitted late. I wonder what can be done so in the future you get your posts in earlier.

    I do think that writing about the Excel homework will be easier to do for the next several posts. The connections should be more obvious there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Robert Giffen Econ 490 fall 2017October 15, 2017 at 2:49 PM

      Hi Professor Arvan,

      I had written out the post but never hit the publish button and didn't open the page until today. That was a silly mistake on my part.

      Delete
  2. David RicardoOctober 15, 2017 at 4:06 PM

    I also noticed that trend of having my own past employment, high school team, or organization experiences brought up again for me to re-evaluate. I think that it's really interesting to analyze these situations years later and with a little more theoretical knowledge on the subjects.

    I also had a similar experience, coming from a STEM background. I found that focusing on a single idea and then seeing if I can come up with five directions for that idea that could create paragraphs has helped my posts a lot. At the very least they have made my writing much more focused.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joan RobinsonOctober 16, 2017 at 7:59 PM

    I agree that this course makes you reevaluate your experiences and connect them to concepts in class. Initially, the experiences may not bring up feels of the topics, but after considering them they are very present in numbers occasions. I think it is easier to identify more experiences after we have discussion in class and hear from our peers and find out what they wrote about.

    I also was initially unsure about blogging and was not confident in my writing skills. I think as the semester went on the class as a whole got more comfortable with the posts and hopefully we continue to improve.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Triangle Model

I have experienced the triangle model in one of my organizations for the last two years as part of a consulting RSO on campus. In this model, my team and I are the agent while the two principals are the RSO and our client. Consultants have the opportunity to explore various areas of business development and digital design. Our teams work closely with clientele to understand problems and formulate solutions that will best fit their business needs. Our RSO is dedicated to developing and offering the best solutions to our clients for their business needs. To consult new ventures, an organization must understand today’s principles of startup development and the life cycle of a modern start up. Well established or new to the game, our RSO tends to approaches each client with a fresh, innovative mindset. We are creatives and business specialists alike. On a weekly basis, it is our job as consultants to decide on what direction to take our research, conduct that research, and then me...
4 comments
Read more

Final Post

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I genuinely liked to hear the Professor speak about all of his different positions because he has had so many very interesting and unique experiences.   I think this class was quite different than most of the 400 level courses have taken thus far. It was different not only in terms of the class structure but content as well. As far as the class structure goes, I really did like it. I think that the blog posts actually ended up helping me learn a lot. Not only did it allow me to reflect upon how important my experiences have been thus far but it showed me things from an economic lens which I would have never considered otherwise. I think that my blog posts got significantly better as the course progressed. I had been taking mostly science classes in college. I had just finished my prerequisites for medical school last semester, so I had not done a lot of writing for a few years. This semester, most of my classes required blogs/essays, so I ha...
4 comments
Read more

Team Production and Gift Exchange

The gift exchange model can be seen everywhere. In particular, I see it quite often living with my three roommates. The model can connect to the three main themes seen in these articles; altruism, fairness, and sharing. In The Power of Altruism , the author states that when we reward people for acts of kindness, they become less inclined to do them. Because it becomes an economic transaction, they do not feel as morally motivated to help.   My roommates and I are very close friends. We respect the duties of being a good roommate and we also take care of each other. On occasion when we know one of our roommates are busy and we are making dinner for ourselves we will offer to cook for them. When we go to the grocery store we often will pick up items for each other. We share our own supplies, medicine, clothes, and many items with each other with nothing definite expected return. We know some roommates who don’t share a single thing and are very independent even though they are a...
3 comments
Read more