Going into my first round of 400 level economics classes, I wasn't sure what to expect. I had seen previous classes focus a lot on concepts and driving home the importance of understanding each of these concepts. When I put three 400 level classes on my schedule, I certainly believed that they would be the traditional, here's what you need to do type of classes. This economics class was definitely not like the others.
For starters, the topics in the class were much more interesting and practical than the ones in my other classes. For the other classes, concepts and memorizing definitions became the habit. I was flooded constantly with information to remember. In this organizations class, everything felt so applicable, which was evident in the blog posts with recent experiences. As a class, we began to see economics in things we never saw before.
As far as the class structure goes, it was clearly different than any other class. Class time itself certainly placed a focus on understanding and learning the material. Unlike every other lecture we experience, which consists of an hour or longer of boredom that leads to distractions, this class, combining a lecture time and time for discussion, helped the concepts and ideas sink in more, because we participated in them. It was stated at the beginning of the year that we are here to gain human capital, and discussion certainly helped my intrinsic motivation for the class.
Attendance and the soft deadlines are two of the more interesting parts of this class to look at. While bonus points for attendance did incentivize me to come to class a little bit, I often make it a priority to get to class every day. I didn't attend every single class, but the bonus point incentive wasn't a big deal by mid semester. I came because I enjoyed the class more. I am not sure how I feel about the soft deadline policy in this class. I understand the approach from a human error perspective, in that we all miss assignments sometimes, but I think for me, as someone who will procrastinate if given the opportunity, the soft deadlines sometimes hurt me. Since the blog posts weren't due at a specific time, I often put them off to a later time because I knew I could do so. If the deadline was a set time, I think I would have done them all on Friday.
While I struggled at times with the excel homework, I did enjoy that part of the class. There wasn't too much match involved that made it unbearable. Plus, the explanation after each problem was very helpful. The ability to understand the problem and the graphs theoretically was important to me, otherwise I was sometimes staring at equations that I didn't totally understand. When it came to time spent, it was usually an hour or two.
Despite my stating above that I procrastinated on the blog posts at times, they were the most interesting part of the class for me. I enjoyed thinking about the concepts we learned and applying them to work scenarios. I spent an hour or so preparing what I wanted to say, and then proceeded to form the posts as I structured them. I enjoyed talking about my time at the sports website I worked at, because that is something I am passionate about doing and it was cool to see the economic and organizational view points in those situations.
Overall, I did enjoy this class. I think there are things, because of the way they were presented, that I will remember and continue to see in my work and in organizations. I am sure there will be times where I send emails because something I remember from this class will appear to me.
Let me zero in on one thing you said, about your own procrastination. To understand that a bit more you might read this piece, Later, which is excellent and gives some insight into what causes procrastination. I procrastinate too, on some things (usually of the clerical variety). I don't procrastinate on things I enjoy. You might try to figure out if there are things you enjoy that are work or school related and made those your focus.
ReplyDeleteI will note that you are the only student who made a comment on the course, once the bonus points stopped. You were pretty hard on yourself in that. I'm no psychologist, but there may be some hints in that to consider.