Managing Future Income Risk

Description:



A great deal of choices made in my life leads to shape the future of myself. From elementary school, I am very interested in my future job and what I am passionate about. I believed that studying is one of a way to prepare for my future. I really enjoyed studying. On the other hand, I personally love drawing. Art is one that I can really focus on and makes my mind calm. As I grew up to be a middle school student, I am still not confident about what I really enjoy. However, I wanted to study hard because knowing new knowledge makes me feel seeing wider perspective of the world. 

In a second year of high school in Korea, students have to make decision about what kind of field to pursue for future. For example, the options might be among university-STEM area (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), university-others area that includes liberal arts, business, media, and so on. Music, arts, sports are also the options. Therefore, If I wanted to study engineering in university, I had to make a decision in the 2nd year of high school. Since I am not very good at math, I chose to study liberal arts of science. After graduated from high school, I chose to move to the United States to study new area; computer science.

At first, I studied at Oakton Community College to transfer to 4-years institution like UIUC. The  thought of studying hard stays until I transferred to University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I managed to get 3.9/4.0 GPA and successfully transferred to UIUC as computer science and economics major. Studying is one type of reliever (Insurance) to me, which might reduce income risk. In addition to this, pursuing computer science is also a safe choice for me because it is very popular in the industry and well known for the job that will never make you hungry in the future. I am fluctuating between finding my passion versus reducing risk for future. If I looked back the path that I stepped, I preferred to reduce any risk for my life. I preferred to make the safest decision among the choices.

Last summer, I worked at department of Computer Science UIUC as a research assistant. My research area was network and information centric area, which were appealing to me at first but I might not continue to do it because I found that I am not super excited about researching. I am still browsing to find what I am really passionate about, but the fields are narrowed down to somewhere between computer science and arts. Therefore I am applying internship for next semester because I want to make sure which area fits for me. My next goal is to get internship during next semester for data analytics or software engineer. All these experiences will be stacked up to be an eye toward the future.

My brother managed most of situation and decision well and now works as a HR manager at Korean corporate, SINSEGAE. He also thought that studying hard is one type of preparation for his future even though he did not know what to do for future when he was young. He graduated as a business major at a well known university, Seong Kyun Kwan university and experienced internships at a company in the United States and SK Telecom in Korea as a business marketer. He decided to have many business related experience before full time job and successfully got a full time job. He managed situations safer ways but just interest fields are different from mine.

Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots (Questionnaire format)
(1) Are the themes from one post that tie into other posts? if so, what are those connections?

There are connecting dots among the themes of blog posts. My first blog was to write about my alias economics John Bates Clark and connect his job to our class work. Then, I wrote about the transaction cost, opportunism, team structure and "illinibucks". All the themes are tied as an economics of organization. Transaction cost introduces any type of cost that occurs for the transaction. I was supposed to write about my experience in organization and transaction cost related to my experience. Opportunism is discussed in the class that it is like a car sneaks in at the end of merging lanes instead of waiting in the right lane. For team structure, I wrote about the most successful organization in my life based on the text book's explanation. Lastly, I wrote about "iilinibucks", which is the way of thinking how to line up in the huge organization like a college.

For the better organization, the member should understand the concept of transaction cost and opportunism and take advantage of them. Also, "illinibucks" gave me time to think about how to efficiently manage the priority in the organization. Therefore, each theme has its own small concept but they are tied into one big concept of the organization.

(2) Aside from addressing the prompt are there ways to connect what you wrote about to course themes? Were there connections that are more obvious to you now than at the time you wrote the post? if so, can you elaborate on that?

At first, it was difficult to connect one theme to another themes. Because I focused on each week's blog post and sometimes I could not understand the theme as well. I was more like rather concentrating on each blog post than connecting the dots. In addition to this, it was vague to connect each theme with few posts. However, I can see the connection between each concepts of blog posts by reviewing them now.

(3) Has your process for writing these posts evolved? Please explain how that has come about.

When I started to write blog posts, it was even hard for me to follow blog post rules. For example, I tend to be slightly off the topic and I did not satisfy minimum counts of words. However, after reviewing and responding to professor's comments and seeing other student's blogs, my writing has been evolved.(At least, trying to focus on the theme and following the basic rules). In addition to this, I could discuss about blog posts in the class time, which is helpful to understand more about the post's theme. Plus, as I learned about organizations of economics, some knowledge learned through the courses helps to understand next's concepts.

(4) Now put yourself in the position of writing the prompt (this one or other prompts for future posts). What would you like to see? Can you give some reasons for that.

If I put myself in the position of writing the prompt, I would see the connection to the course. I feel like writing blog posts is digesting raw knowledge. Therefore, if the writer can connect the concept and apply the concept to another in writings, this is a good sign of learning the stuff. Next, I would also consider examples as important values. It is ideal to learn the course context in real lives, which means that invaluable information in textbook is converted or melted in each one's life. Therefore, I would see connectivity and experience in writings.

Illinibucks

There are a great deal of things that are allocated to students on a first come and first serve base in the university. When it is difficult to prioritize, it seems to be fair to take first come and first serve base, because it attributes the decision to the people who are actually interested in. By contrast, what if the campus gave each student an allocation of "Illini bucks" which could be used of the purpose of moving to the head of the line?

One of the candidate of this "illinibucks" would be registration of classes. Current registration system prioritize to let major-related students have the priority to register for the courses. If "illinibucks" takes this place, it would definitely create some sort of confusion. First of all, it is possible to delay students to complete degrees in the university if the administered price is too high. The students who are not affordable to buy highly priced "illinibucks" are impossible to register for the popular classes unless they pay the much amount of money. This will result in delay of graduation for some studnets and discouragement of study. If the administered price is too high, then the demand should be very limited to the students who are enormously rich. In this case, "illinibucks" will turn out to be a luxurious good, which might not have a great deal of influence to the registration system. If the administered price is too low, then it might not affect the current system. Because it is affordable to everyone to pay one dollar for registering a class. Therefore, it will be similar to the first come and first serve base with a little payment.

Another candidates would be concert, speech, or sports game tickets. For example, the previous president, Barack Obama visited to University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign to give students speech in last year and the tickets to attend are randomly given to students who registered to attend. In this case, students might be ready to use "Illinibucks" to get the tickets. The phenomenon of applying "Illinibucks" to this situation is expected to be similar to the situation of registering classes. If the price is too high, students are willing to pay that much of money if they are very passionate about or enormously rich. If the price is reasonable, students who are interested in are willing to pay for "illinibucks". If the price is too low, the demand should be higher and it will turn in to the first come and first serve base with a little payment.

The introduction of "Illinibucks" can resolve problems of high demanding in college, if its price and use are wisely systemized. It could lead to the efficient way to line up the students, when it is necessarily needed to. However, this also could spawn problems such as inequality or unfairness, because it can permantly keep some students from being a head priority of the lines.  Students would contest against that college is selling "illinibucks" and take advantage of the benefit to school, which might be looked like too commercial.

In conclusion, there are many situations of using "illinibucks" in college such as registering classes or buying a speech ticket. If the administered price is too high, it is likely to turn out to be a luxurious good which is beneficial to very limited students. If the price is too low, it will not affect current system much because it is affordable to everyone just as the same. However, if the demand and supply lines are crossed at reasonable price, it can be used efficiently to line up the students.