Fall A can make a first year Tuckie feel as if he/she knows nothing, about everything. Professors constantly throw foreign terms at us in class (Chebyshev’s theorem! Long term equilibrium!), and not only expect us to learn these terms FAST, but also expect us to discuss them intelligently in a cold call, analyze them competently in a homework and demonstrate proficiency of them in an exam. This constant flow of new information at an extraordinarily high level can leave us feeling as if we are barely staying afloat.
It also leads us to make incessant jokes about the deluge in which we are swimming. Walk down a Tuck hallway, you’ll hear a student exclaim, “The quantity of information I can absorb has exceeded my point of maximum capacity!” Grab a sandwich in the cafeteria, and you’ll overhear another shout, “I can’t do this! My confidence interval is at 1%, with a standard error of 2%!”
Look at this situation a little closely, however, and what do we have? Correlation. The more we joke about how little we absorbing, the more we demonstrate how much we are. You can’t joke about a term you’ve never heard of. You also can’t fully appreciate how much you have learned until you take a step back and see the broader picture.
I came to Tuck without a background in Economics, and thus my jokes center mostly around my inability to grasp the subject. That lobster can be worth one price on Monday and another on Tuesday bothers me, and I think it’s weird for Price to be on the Y axis and Quantity to be on the X. Yet, in one month, I’ve been asked to not only understand these basic economic concepts, but also to price discriminate computer software in order to maximize profit and to forecast the financial future of the aluminum industry. I write this blog post with next week’s final looming over me, a mere one month after my first class.
For these past few weeks, I’ve told everyone that I cannot think in economic terms: Economics’ demands were greater than my brain’s supply. Yet, the other day, something odd happened: after a class discussion on pricing, I called my father, whose favorite way to think about anything is in economic terms. The conversation soon progressed to Disney World’s tactic of creating lines to rides in order to maximize marginal profit from ticket sales, and I found myself not only understanding it, but also having an opinion about it.
I began to realize – I actually had developed the ability to understand and think critically about the topics we were covering. This understanding lead me to question the marginal cost of producing a box of cereal yesterday, and the economic ramifications of global health insurance the day before. Perhaps, even though I am not the Economics whiz that some of my classmates are, I am coming out of Fall A with a very real appreciation of economic forces and their effect on the operations of a business.
So – what is the key-takeaway? We learn a LOT in Fall A, while also making new friends and adjusting to a new environment. This influx can leave us feeling as though we know nothing. Yet, we have all learned far more about Economics, Statistics, Leadership and General Management than most could think possible in a span of four weeks. We don’t know everything, but it is actually pretty exciting to think about what we do know and what we will know.
As nice as this realization is, however, I also learned in Analysis for General Managers that strategic communication is a key ingredient to success. So, to my Professor of Economics, if you are reading, please keep this post in mind when you are grading my Final on Tuesday 
Read the full article: I’m No Dummy! (Variable)