Tuesday, July 14, 2015

A Field Trip for A Field Trip

In the morning, Professor Mesznik enlightened us on his typical, odd, and out-of-the-blue topics ranging from Rosie the Riveter’s relationship with economics back in the 1940's, to a paper on the nails used to attach horseshoes to a horse’s hooves. He taught us how economics affect all parts of life, even people’s positions in society. After taking the class’ questions as usual, he explained certain methods on how the government increased economic growth. The one that he went into detail in he most was quantitative or monetary easing, which increased growth by buying bonds which then increased their prices, lowered the interest rates, and encouraged spending in the private sector. From this, he talked about a “liquidity trap,” a sort of extension of a property associated with monetary easing that states that the money supply reaches a certain point or limit after it has been eased where additional easing would be pointless. He then segued into how this related to Kaynesian economics, a concept we had discussed a week ago, where, instead of trying to ease economics to no one’s benefit any further, the government should spend the money elsewhere on better projects. I liked that Professor Mesznik was able to reference something that we had learned before and able to tie it back into something new; it made making connections between new concepts much easier.

I ate lunch with Tiara at the cafeteria. She told me that she - and I quote - “forgets” to eat sometimes. So, me, being the good ol’ friend that I am decided to give her a hand and remind her to eat lunch by having it with her.

During the afternoon session we switched from talking about bonds to talking about stocks and the value of a company. Ms. Santos explained that the value of a firm is dependent on its future cash flow and that this value could be calculated in a multitude of ways and that there are many methods to analyze and parts to consider of finance and economics like the global and domestic economy. Stock comes into play based on how much the company is worth; poor company means poor stock. The most exciting thing Ms. Santos mentioned today was a prospective field trip to the Museum of Money on Wall Street! Huzzah! Hopefully that’ll actually happen.

Since everyone else in the cohort was busy, I had signed up for an RA trip to go to Washington Square Park and Strand bookstore. I went to go eat dinner and met Sean, an incoming sophomore from a different program than mine. It was really awkward at first, as Sean wasn’t quite the talker, but eventually I coaxed some conversation out of him. He was part of the Double Discovery Center (DDC) Program, and was currently taking English, Trigonometry, and Chorus. 

On a random side note, guess what? He thought I was going to Columbia University! Here I was thinking that I still looked like I was 12, but lo and behold!

I left a little early to get to the place where I was supposed to meet up with everyone for the R.A. trip. But no one showed up, not even the R.A. leading the trip. I triple-checked the time and the place, and everything was correct, but still, no one came. And so after fifteen minutes of thumb-twiddling, I left to go back to my dorm.

Instead, Tiara and I went to go get some food nearby. She got a jumbo slice of pizza and I got some frozen yogurt. When we got back, we hung out and talked for a while, the thing most girls end up doing when they hang out. I also got the chance to try some cake pudding from “Sugar Sweet Sunshine” that was very weird and also oddly tasty. Although I was initially a little bummed that something had happened or rather something hadn’t happened with the R.A. trip, it was nice to end the day with something sweet, literally. (Come to think of it, I end my days like that most of the time.)

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