We have learned many interesting economic concepts this year such as marginal utility and ouportunity cost. I decided to take a look at these economic concepts in a place beside the economy. What better place to apply these concepts then the classroom.
As seniors, I believe we are very lenient with what we do in class time. Often a study session means watching Netflix, and a bathroom break turns into a "short trip" around the school. In extreme cases, we would rather sleep an extra hour than show up for AP Micro. For these cases, the opportunity cost of wasting time is being educated and learning. When we are in the moment, we often don't think about the opportunity cost of these decisions. If we did, we could clearly see that it does not always add up.
We could say that in the short term, the utility we get from wasting class time is greater than that of studying. However, in the long term, this changes. We may end up stressed for exams as we never studied, or because we were not in class while a topic was covered. Furthermore, we may need to make up assignments, therefore the time we waste in the past will only catch up to us in the future. We can see in the long term, we would have more utility from studying than from wasting time.
Applying economics in this manner could definitely save us some stress in the future. Considering the potential opportunity cost of watching Netflix in class, and comparing the short term and long term utility gained from taking a nap rather than paying attention could end up saving us big time. I hope the next time you consider sleeping through economics, you do yourself a favor and apply what you learned in that class to make the rational decision.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Namibia's Economy
Namibia is a country that not many people think about. It is a small nation, right above South Africa, that bases most of its economy on to...
This is even more interesting when you think about college. Classes in college have a much bigger monetary value than classes in high school. Still it could be argued that the utility gained from a cutting college class can be greater that the money lost, at times. But the same logic still applies, if you keep cutting class than you need to make stuff up, and thats probably even harder in college. That plus the actual cost value makes cutting class a really bad choice.
ReplyDeleteThis takes a very negative stance on skipping class and I agree that in most cases skipping class results in negative externalities. However, skipping class is only detrimental to one's academic success when they skip class to waste time. Skipping class can be highly beneficial when one uses that time go over the material in a way that matches their learning technique. Additionally, many classes spend a large portion of their time doing busy work. By skipping these classes one can get ahead on the course material and better prepare for the tests.
ReplyDelete