Classes on economics help students understand human motivations

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Keith Syvinski, Freeimage

Money can explain a lot of human decision-making and motivation.

When I was little, I thought of the world as the place where I and the people around me lived. I thought all of the things happening in my day coming together to make the whole world. When I got older, I realized that there are more people in the world and they are all individuals who possess distinct values and characteristics. This whole world always makes me wonder, how does the world and all its people operate? Economics gives me part of the answer.

Human society is always changing, like most things in the world. We can’t say we totally understand society because even society doesn’t know itself well. However, throughout thousands of years of human advancement, there is a notion that never changed when there is order in society—currency.

Currency, also known as money, becomes the way people exchange to satisfy their needs. We can’t do everything on our own, but we want to try everything. Money provides you with a possibility to achieve your wants. “Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises,” Greek philosopher Aristotle said.

Last year at BSM, I took Business Management taught by Mr. Patrick Krieger. During the class, I learned how managers decide to operate their business. The method they use to analyze their business and manage is simple but inspiring. I took Accounting last quarter, taught by Mr. John Sabol. In this course, I realized the importance of accounting in our society. People do accounting to record the changes of money. In other words, it’s the history of currency. I’m currently taking Microeconomics taught by Mr. Jeff Fix for this quarter. Microeconomics is the study of decision-making by individuals through the scale of economics. It’s not hard to understand once you realized that companies are acting on their best profit.

After taking those courses, most people may see the world is not only about right and wrong, but also more other things involved such as money and desires. However, that does not mean we should focus on money that much in our lives. Money is just like cars, laptops, and pencils. We use it to do something, but we don’t rely on it.
Overall, I would say taking those courses would absolutely help you with some understanding of current society, whatever your future major might be. Also, it’s not hard to learn because Krieger, Sabol, and Fix love to cover lots of current news or life experiences that are related to the topic.