A large majority of my class is spent on tangents. The people in my class are really engaged and always ask questions about current events or how whatever we are learning about applies to current situations, and we always end up on a tangent. Some are longer than others, but most are around five minutes. But today was different.
We were discussing loanable funds and the financial system and we got to stocks and bonds. Professor Coleman diverged from his slides and went in depth into stocks and bonds and how they work. He then asked us if this was interesting. There was a resounding yes, and upon hearing this, he decided to continue the tangent. We talked all about the different aspects of trading stock and selling bonds, investment banking, what different types of banks do, what different kinds of funds are, and how people behave when using the stock market. I found out that the stock market is actually dwarfed by the bond market - something that I did not know even existed - in terms of size.
He called of this knowledge "financial tools," and seeing as a career in finance looks quite attractive to me, I was naturally invested in this tangent. It was really interesting. There was a lot that I thought I knew that was wrong, and a lot that I just didn't know at all, but I'm glad I do. It's days like these that really cement the idea of this class serving to make me able to analyze more thoroughly the economic issues we face today as well as economic decisions in my personal life.
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