Dr. Greenlaws ECON 300

Today I submitted my ‘final’ version of my paper.  Hoping to go to Boston next semester, it probably won’t be the last time I look at the damned subject of Intellectual Property Rights.

But, after taking econ 300, what have I learned?

DON’T WASTE THE FIRST FEW WEEKS.  During the first couple of weeks there wasn’t much to do I thought.  Just think of a few ideas, no big deal.  WRONG, thinking of good, creative ideas is much more complicated and time consuming then one would think.  One problem?  Turns out the people that came before me were pretty creative.  The idea I was thinking of all summer long, the savings rate & credit debt, had been done the year prior.  AND DONE WELL. Damn.  So I had to scramble for a new topic idea and never was able to truly catch up.

BE INTERESTED IN YOUR TOPIC.  Having studied Intellectual Property Rights for about 3 months straight you sorta get sick of it unless you are somewhat interested in it.  Fortunately, I was at least somewhat interested.   Picking a topic you don’t care about can only end badly.  Being involved with your subject matter can help keep you going when progress come at a snail’s pace.

FIND SIGNIFICANCE.  Oh god this is important.  If you can’t honestly say your topic is important for some reason or another, its probably not a good topic. My personal example?  Turns out Intellectual Property Rights variable was only about a 5% composition of the US Current Account.  Not a big deal.  Further, it was losing its percentage! It was getting less significant as time went on!!!! Thats not good and I wished I researched more, earlier, to find out.

UNDERSTAND THE HYPOTHESIS and THEORY.  If you don’t get why you’re using your theory, what it means, or honestly what your hypothesis is actually arguing something isn’t right.  My hypothesis was/is vague and doesn’t actually prove anything besides IP effects exports.

LAYOUT A SCHEDULE.  Greenlaw’s due dates are all nice and good.  But create some personal goals on when to have things done so it doesn’t come all down to the wire.  Research is probably the easiest thing to look over but will come back to bite you more then anything else.  Plan on spending more time researching and just reading up on previous knowledge then time tracking down data points.  And once you have data? LIFE IS SO EASY. Kind of.  You run a regression, it either works out or it doesn’t.  Granted if it doesn’t life becomes a little more tough then it should be, but once you get a regression done you’ve pretty much got it made if you can at least explain what happened and why or why not it didn’t work.

TALK TO PEOPLE.  This includes your professor(s) and classmates.  Ask around for advice or help.  I didn’t remember how to run a correlation matrix.  I asked Greenlaw, he told me to ask Margaret. AND I DID!  and it worked!  And since so many of us are doing projects, every so often we do have related topics.  Thats not bad, two heads can be better then one.

Thats all I have for you.  Theres likely more, but I’m done.  Finished.  Complete.  Burnt out.   If anyone from next years class is reading this, enjoy yourself and good luck.