Demotivating Experience

Mar 27, 2015 • Kim Moir

I have an undergraduate degree in business. In first year, we took Micro/Macro Economics as a required course. I was excited about it because I had done a lot of reading on Economics and thought it would be an interesting course. My professor was a sarcastic Englishmen who reviewed the class with distain. After a few introductory classes, he started talking about demand and supply curves and the impact on price elasticity. He would always would start the class by using the example of a commodity good to illustrate different concept. At first the example he used was guns aand butter. Then he say, a better example of a commodities would be guns and women. Laughter arose from many of the 18 year old boys in the class. I was deeply outraged but did not say speak up.

When the midterm came, I was shocked to discover that I had failed the test despite studying very hard for it and feeling I had a good grasp of the material. My friend (who had also failed the midterm) and and I went to the professor’’s office to discuss our results and ask for more examples material similar to the test problems so that we could practice and gain a better grasp of the material. He was not very helpful and said that it was just inevitable that a certain percentage of people failed the course. I spent many hours redoing all the excercises in the textbook and was able to pull up my final grade to a B+.

What I should have done differently: Research the professors who teach the class before signing up for it. The other professor who taught the same course was excellent and won many teaching awards.