[MSJ] - Day 5: Class Begins

Today was the first day I class, and I woke up tired but excited. I had originally wanted to show up for a scheduled ab workout at the gym at 8, but I took too long getting ready and underestimated how long it would take to walk to the gym, so I ended up running for 15 minutes instead. By the time I got back to the dorms, showered and dressed, I figured I wouldn't have the time to have a sitdown breakfast at the dining hall, especially since I wanted to be early to class on the first day. Instead, I grabbed a couple granola nut bars that I had bought at Walgreens on Friday (I knew I would need snacks in the future).

I left the dorm building at 8:45 with the goal of finding my class before 9. I knew where the building was located, but I wasn't sure exactly where my classroom was in the building. It took me just under five minutes to walk along the east side of campus along University Avenue to find Saieh Hall, one of the main Econ buildings on campus. Thankfully there were lots of helpful maps in the building, so I found the room very quickly. I sat next to Kate, another Roger house member I had met the day before.

Saieh Hall, the building in which my class takes place.
(Picture is borrowed from Google because I forgot to take one)

Today's class consisted of two lectures before lunch with a break in between, and an experiment and discussion after lunch (also separated by a break.) I'll try to briefly explain what we covered today, which will probably be a good way to help me remember the lesson. Economics is defined by the textbook as the study of people's decisions. Economics is based on three main "pillars", Optimization, Equilibrium, and Empiricism. Optimization is the idea that humans will try to "optimize" by choosing the best feasible option. Basically, when people are faced with a choice, they choose what they think is the best choice they can afford. Equilibrium is a situation that is reached when everyone is optimizing, and so a good way to think about it is that equilibrium is reached when no one would benefit by changing their behavior. An example that helped me is to imagine that you are going to pay for your groceries at a grocery store. Optimizing is choosing the shortest line since it's your best option, and when all the lines are roughly the same length you are in equilibrium since no one would benefit from changing lines. Empiricism is an easier concept to grasp, at least for me, and it simply means backing up your theories with real-world or experimental data, or using data to form theories. Hopefully, that makes some sense and wasn't too boring.

In the afternoon, the TAs led an experiment similar to the prisoner's dilemma. For those that don't know, the prisoner's dilemma is a thought experiment (I think?) in which two burglars/generic criminals are put into different questioning cells by police. The prisoners are told that if they snitch on their partner, they will get away scot-free, and their partner will have a very long sentence. If their partner also snitches on them, though, then they both get somewhat long sentences. The catch is that if neither of them snitches, they will both get fairly short sentences. Again hopefully that makes sense, but I also found a video that does a good job explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Lo2fgxWHw. The video goes a bit further than just the game, but I thought it was interesting.The Prisoner's Dilemma

After class, we had a reading to prepare for tomorrow, where we'll talk about experiments and data more, and I'll try to explain them briefly and to the best of my understanding through this blog.

The dining hall from above

The rest of my afternoon was spent relaxing with new friends and getting dinner at the dining hall. Specific shout-out: the fries are AMAZING. We got cookies afterward, and then took it easy this evening, with all of us preparing for class tomorrow. I really liked day one, and look forward to coming back from this trip with a much deeper understanding of a lot more than I thought.

Walking back to the dorms after dinner