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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 have been working very hard to improve my writing skills. Because of this, I tried to take my time making the posts. Typically, depending upon the prompt, I would spend about an hour brainstorming and anywhere between 1-3 hours writing blog posts.  

Some of the excel homework assignments were quite useful while some others were denser. The videos that supplemented them did help a lot. Additionally, hearing you reiterate some of the more important concepts from each excel homework helped to engrave them into my brain. I do think that it would have helped on occasion to have PowerPoints with more detail for the harder homework assignments. Also, sometimes the excel homework was very picky about the input which took a bit of time to get adjusted to. On average, the homework assignments would take 1-3 hours.

I think most of all, I really enjoyed the group project. Specifically, learning about identity in the field of economics. This was very interesting for me for a personal reason. I had already had this sort of thinking and had talked to one of my RSO’s presidents about it last year when we were trying to figure out how to keep our board members involved. I told her about how important it was for our board members to feel like they are a part of our organization and feel connected to what we do in order to have high levels of effort. In fact, the president took my advice from the very start of that school year and worked hard to capture this motivation. It turned out to be one of our most successful years ever and we had a record number of popular events and new members. It made me feel very excited that I was able to help guide our organization in the right direction. Then come to class and read about this similar thinking I had thought of was very exciting. The paper helped to solidify and clearly lay out all of the inner mechanisms behind this concept of identity and I really enjoyed learning about it and working with my group.


Although I have always been interested in how organizations function, I think this class really opened my eyes on how to consider things from a different perspective. I have recommended it to others and I am glad I was able to have this experience.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanDecember 10, 2017 at 8:42 AM

    Thank you for the comments. I'm glad you enjoyed the course. You got started a little slowly with it. It seems you've caught up pretty well.

    On the matter of identity with the organization, I wish it were as easy as you indicated. It might be easy if the people already self-select into the organization and thus show they want to be identified with it by their participation. But in other cases, I believe it is quite hard. To illustrate, and while this isn't current information, several years ago I became aware that the U of I alumni association had trouble keeping graduates interested in it. The average alumni contribution was only $8/year, lower than other peer institutions that created greater ties with the students when they were on campus. (And had a better football team, which might have mattered for this.)

    In your case, I wonder if you identify more with the RSO you mentioned than with the university itself and what might have been done and might still be done for you to make a greater connection to the campus.

    I will note that while I've contributed to the alumni associations at both Northwestern, where I did my graduate work, and Cornell, where I got my undergraduate degree, I no longer contribute and don't feel loyalty to them. I am connected with classmates and housemates, but not to the universities. So there is something of a puzzle still to figure out - identity with what? and how might organizations encourage identity with them and not with some subsidiary?

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    Replies
    1. Robert Giffen Econ 490 fall 2017December 17, 2017 at 2:05 PM

      Hello,

      Perhaps I explained it in a way that was quite basic before I was able to read the paper. But nonetheless, I was very excited when I discovered it was an actual principle. That is interesting that you mentioned the alumni contributions. I am from Champaign so I wonder if that will play a role in my inclinations to donate to the university in the future. I also wonder what they have done to improve those contributions. I think that because of my background, I will always identity with the U of I since my family is so involved with it and it has been a big part of my childhood. I do think that RSO has helped me connect to the University in the sense that I appreciate the diversity that it offers. In regards to your loyalty, I wonder why that has happened. Maybe if they updated their alumni with newsletters or such that would help (which I assume they probably do)? Maybe the success of the sports teams after you graduated and hearing about them in the news plays a role as well. I think that the alumni tend to be stronger at schools with good teams which keeps them coming back for the homecoming games and keeps them involved with the University. Additionally, if their children or other family members have gone to the same schools then maybe that increases a sense of loyalty as well.

      Delete
  2. Joan RobinsonDecember 10, 2017 at 10:30 AM

    I agree that the professors vast knowledge and experiences in different roles on campus was valuable to the course. I did not state this in my post, but I definitely think it was a critical part of the course and added a lot of interesting information and context to the organizations covered in class.

    I agree that the course opened my mind to the construction of organizations and made me think about them in a critical way. I would also recommend this course to my peers and hope Prof. Arvan continues to teach it.

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  3. Dale MortensenDecember 12, 2017 at 1:56 PM

    Like you, I had not taken many writing classes before and I like that I benefited from this course by being able to write about topics with greater ease. Before writing for me was always a drag, but having to do it on a weekly basis really gets you more and more comfortable with it.

    I really enjoyed learning and writing about identity as well. I agree with the Professor in it not being such an easy topic to grasp. One can only learn from observations and interpret what they believe is beneficial for others. Different situations call for different interpretations of identity so it is very difficult to come up with general solutions and behaviors when it comes to identity. The best we can do is try and find a balance that works most efficient for each scenario.

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