I'm a fourth-year university student fighting my way towards an honours degree in economics and loving it (almost) every step of the way.
My journey to the promised land of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith began several years ago, in high school social studies. My teacher taught us a very basic unit on market-clearing supply and demand and I remember thinking, "This is retarded." I continued to think that way as I applied for engineering programs around Alberta.
Precisely two weeks into my university career, I realized that I could never be an engineer and dropped out just before the deadline. I was adrift in a sea of possible careers and had no idea what I should do, since I had been planning on engineering since grade 10. After brief stints of getting prerequisites for Dental Hygiene and Pharmacy, job-shadowing various people, and talking to all the grown-ups I knew about their careers, I decided on Accounting.
In the first year of my anticipated Bachelor of Commerce, I had to take two economics courses: Introductions to both Macro- and Microeconomics. I fell in love right there and knew I had discovered my program. Four years into my degree, I'm still loving it (despite the odd Mathematical Econ exam). I find that I get so much happiness out of calculating deadweight loss and analyzing regulatory schemes. I just hope that I can find a way to keep loving economics in the workforce.
