Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Brookie's Turn



Annie told me we were doing a blog. She then told me it was my turn to post on it. As a stress release for my upcoming Econ midterm I have decided to write about why no one should be an econ major. If anyone points out that my time would perhaps be better spent studying for said midterm, I invite you to review point 6.

Reasons no one should be an econ major:

1. They only teach econometrics at 8 am M-Thurs Spring Term. I signed up for the class not realizing it started that early. One kid helpfully pointed it out to me a week before classes were to start but I thought he was kidding and ignored him. He was not, I learned at 12 am the Sunday before Spring Term classes started.

2. I stepped in a puddle as I left a review at 9 at night, knowing I would be back at that same puddle in less than 11 hours for my next lecture. My sperry’s will not be dry by then, “boat shoes” my eye.

3. On my first econometrics midterm I got a D, minus. With the curve that put me at an A-. Our professor was impressed with how well we did. The average was a 51. So really those Harvard austerity professors are doing quite well. 

4. A student asked the professor to review a concept we’d had on an in-class quiz. He said “wouldn’t that be a good thing to put on your next exam?” laughed. And then called on another student.

5. I had a nightmare last night that the professor referenced in question 6 was replaced by another econ professor I’d had, I was crying and upset in said nightmare. I don’t know what’s more upsetting to me, that I had nightmares about which econ professor was teaching a class I had or that I preferred point 6 professor to another professor to the point of tears.

6. Today in a midterm review I asked about a question on a practice test that was worth about 20% of the whole test. My TA’s response, “When I took the class my TA’s told me if we got this question to skip it. Because we wouldn’t get it right.” We then moved on. Glad I asked.

7. Sometimes my professor does this really fun thing where he misspells things on the definition section of his test. This can send stressed students into epileptic fits as they google “bookstrapping” and google helpfully asks, “do you mean bootstrapping?” I DON’T KNOW IF I MEAN BOOKSTRAPPING OR BOOTSTRAPPING GOOGLE BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHAT EITHER WORD MEANS SO DON’T ASK ME WHICH ONE I MEAN BECAUSE ITS AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY!! (in case you were wondering you can get “shh’d” in the No-Sh Zone of the library, glad I know what the line is). I asked my TA in a review which it was. It was in fact, bootstrapping, the definition was in the appendix of Chapter 6 of our textbook, duh. One student’s response, “we have a book?”