As a college student, there are lots of choices that I have to face everyday. And usually, there isn't any possible way to do everything at once. If I choose one good thing, I'll have to forgo another. So I am learning about how to make these decisions by balancing the costs of not choosing something. For example, will it be more costly to not finish this homework or miss out on a rare opportunity? The answer isn't always easy, but can clearly be seen if I just take a minute and weigh the situation before acting. Thanks, Professor Kearl.
So what? I think this will be an important skill to use when I have even more responsibility, like a family or a true career. I can't ever have everything in life, so I need to try and choose the best things. And sometimes, that means just minimizing my losses. Hey, life isn't always fair.
Thanks to a good friend, I'm going to try and take a step back when I'm about to make a tough choice. The solution to our problems isn't always to just "bite the bullet" and lose out. Yes, sometimes it's okay to not do a certain thing because it's more important to do something else. So I'm going to start really sizing up situations before I self-sacrifice or lose out.
This past week I have learned about this as well. This past week I was really busy with exams for the accounting program. They had them all this past week with the exams closing on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon. Our MCOM class starts at 11 and so because each exam took three hours in order to make it to class I would have to take the exam the day before it closes which means I lose a day to study for that exam. So I had a classic opportunity cost problem arise. Either go to class and sacrifice the opportunity to study more for an exam, or to skip class and study a little longer for the exam which might result in a better score in the class. After evaluating the potential points earned I decided my time was better spent studying for the exam than in class for MCOM. So there's always a cost, but you have to make the decision.
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