Recently, I was in English class and I had to make the decision between writing my essay or watching the new diss track that just came out. Obviously, I chose to be productive and watch the diss track, but there were consequences as I won't have as strong a grade and my A will be in jeopardy. In terms of opportunity cost, by choosing to watch the diss track, I had the opportunity cost of not working on my essay and getting a higher grade.
If we take the same scenario and apply it to second semester senior, we can understand why the terrible disease called senioritis occurs. As a second semester senior, the student's opportunity cost of getting a lower grade doesn't affect them as colleges won't care as much about the second semester grades, meaning the student can continuing watching the diss tracks and have a much smaller opportunity cost. This applies to many decisions that will occur during the senior's second semester, and will cause what many of us call senioritis. Overall, it is always important to consider the opportunity costs behind certain decisions, and in the future, I will consider the cost of a lower grade before watching the response to the diss track I was watching in class.
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...
Thanks for the post! I think it's very creative that you related senioritis to economics. Your post is definitely true: the opportunity cost of getting worse grades is lower during second semester. Another lens to look at senioritis through is incentives: throughout high school students are incentivized to get good grades to get into college. But once seniors already know the college they're going to, that powerful incentive if removed. Now, the incentives to get good grades (and the opportunity costs of getting bad grades) are much lower, which leads to the common condition known as senioritis.
ReplyDeleteGreat job relating economic concepts to other things in the real world. I think taking in mind the opportunity cost of different situations are essential to making rational decisions. However, as you mentioned, if we realize the lack of worth behind actions such as studying second semester, we might end up dropping a couple letter grades and not getting the education we could if we tried. Ok,I've got to go watch the diss track now.
ReplyDeleteAs we approach the second semester of senior year, I can definitely see that seniorities is becoming more apparent among my classmates. I think relating our behavior to opportunity cost was a great idea. Seniors tend not to work as hard during second semester as the opportunity cost of getting low grades is low during the second semester as we are already admitted to colleges. However, colleges can still drop us if our grades get too low, so it is important to remember that we still need to study during second semester.
ReplyDelete