Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Executing a Brownhouse Kick

Today was another eventful day in Providence, which never fails to impress. I woke up at 7 as I had been recently, but after accidentally turning off my alarm instead of just putting it on snooze I ended up waking up at 8:14. I decided not to panic, and just skipped breakfast, and actually ended up arriving early to class. We didn't have as much lecturing in class today, as Nick Coleman accurately assumed that we were being overloaded the last couple of days. I am amazed at just how much we've learned over a mere eight days of class, and after fully understanding previous years' AP test questions we had to do for homework, I am legitimately considering taking the AP Macroeconomics test next year, which the course is actually designed to prep students for. 
With every class I attend, I am starting to like Economics more and more, as it mixes just enough of the subject I enjoy most, math, without going into complete overkill like a Mathematics major would consist of (even I get bored of math eventually). Today was one of the first times throughout the course that I actually felt more prepared than my fellow Macroeconomics students, and it was all thanks to the block schedule that El Cerrito High School employs. Today we were learning about the marginal propensity to consume (basically, the fraction representing how much money you would spend if you were randomly given cash. For instance, if the MPC was .8, and someone was given 100 dollars, they would spend 80 dollars, and the person who received those 80 dollars would in turn spend 64 dollars). Nick pointed out that total money spent with a set stimulus (amount of money put in the pot so to speak) followed a basic series. I had taken Calculus BC, which was only possible for me by my "doubling up" on math and taking two math courses sophomore and junior year each. Series were one of the major topics in Calculus BC, so when Nick asked what equation would represent the sum of the series, I was pleasantly surprised to see that only Emily and I, BC veterans, understood the answer. After spending a week and a half with a decent amount of students who only seem to be using this course as a refresher, it was nice to finally know something they didn't, and it made me appreciate the many benefits of my school's block schedule. 
After class, Mrs. Kaplan took all of the Brownies over to the historic John Brown house, which looked gorgeous. We took a tour of the house, and while the tour may have lasted a bit longer than I would have liked, it was still nice to see all of the architecture from the mid-1700s, which was simply stunning. It is always interesting to understand just how old some of the buildings on the East Coast are, and since I personally am a huge fan of these older buildings, this is just another great selling point to attend an East Coast school.
Unfortunately, after the tour we had to head back to class to make up time we will lose on the 4th of July break. Fortunately, since we were moving at a rapid pace through the class, Nick decided that we could watch a movie, and the class voted to watch Moneyball (it has money in the title, so that's as economics-related as we need). I had already seen the movie, but it was nice to have some full-blown relaxation time, and relaxing while watching something baseball-related is the dream for me. I can't believe we're halfway done with the course already, and can't wait for class tomorrow.

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