4 - Risk management (major and extra curriculum)

I never occur to me to think about the relationship between my future income risk and the choices I make now in college. I believe there is a really strong tie among those two.

First of all, a lot of people, including some advisors, are saying that your major does not decide your career path. Well, to some extent, that might be true. But if you look closely, by choosing a major, you actually narrow down the possibilities of potential career. For example, by choosing to be a Econ major, it is very much unlikely that I became a Mechanical Engineer (ME), because I do not possess the knowledge or skills that is required to perform in that field. And if we calculate the arithmetic mean of the salaries of Econ graduates, we could get a number let's say $60,000. And if we do the same thing for ME graduates, we could also get a number, let's say $80,000. The point is: if I choose to be a Econ major and perform well, I kind of lock myself around the $60,000 range. It would be unlikely to go way above or way down of $60,000. Therefore, by choosing a major with bright future and work hard, I reduced the risk of having to work for an underpaid job, and likely to get a job with $50,000 to $70,000 salary.

Moreover, the summers between semesters give me a lot of time. 3 months time is almost like the length of a semester. And no matter I apply for grad school or a job, admission officers or recruiter would definitely interested in what kind of activities I involved with in all past summers so that they can assess me. I studied aboard at University of Cambridge in England in summer 2012, and interned at a major national bank head quarter in my home city during the past summer. These experience granted me an expanded horizon, enlarged network or relationships, teamwork and analytical skills. These skills are critical credentials for landing a job in my area of interests or applying graduate school.

If I stand at the school’s or recruiter’s perspectives, I would understand that it is a lot riskier to admit or recruit a graduate with just high GPA but no extra-curriculum activities than a graduate with comparable GPA and a lot other experiences, because the person with fewer experiences will not able to provide proof of his/her abilities without showing them in certain activities like interning. Thus there is a greater possibility that s/he could not perform as expected.

Sadly there are no close relatives or friends of my family have been through the same career path that I am about to take. I bet I would benefit a lot from them if there were any. 

3 - Opportunism

Opportunism is, I believe, a neutral word. When someone choose to walk up to talk to the recruiter he met in career fair before in a restaurant and later scored a job, we call it opportunism. When someone cut in line while nobody finds out and have the chance of buying the last ticket, we can also call it opportunism. Just as professor said, opportunistic behavior can be either ethical or unethical. Also, it is not always the best thing to be opportunistic. I want to share a story I involved and witnessed. It happened at the Business Career Fair this week.

If you every been to the Business Career Fair here on campus, you would do research and narrow down the companies that you want to talk to because there are just way too many people. It is difficult for anyone to be able to talk to a bunch of companies under the limited time you have. So it was very critical to save time and energy. Long line of students queueing for recruiters can be seen everywhere. But not everyone decided to wait in the line as supposed to.

I was queueing in a long line to talk to a consulting firm. There were three recruiters, each has a line of 2-3 people waiting to talk to them. And there was a very long line that waiting to queue for the three short lines so it leaves the space between short lines and the long line that other people can walk and avoid jam. Most of the people sees the situation would queue at the end of the long line. But I saw two people looked at the long line and just walk straight to the short lines when the people at the front of the long line did not look at them. And as you could tell, they came later than I did but still talked to recruiter before me.

Clearly those two people took the chance and cut in line so that they could save time and energy to talk to other companies that they are interested in. It is an act of opportunism even though it is not ethical. They took advantages of the situation. It is really tempting to cut in line during career fair since the long line, high temperature and the noise could stress you out very quickly. Those two people just simply want to rush the process and boost their chance of landing a job.

You might say that it could be that they really didn’t realize that the long line of people were waiting for the short lines. But the truth is, they peaked at the long lines several times after they stepped in the short lines. So from my perspective, I do not believe that they did not do it on purpose.

Therefore, it is not unusual to see opportunistic and unethical behavior at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive.

2 - Changes in organization and transaction cost (badminton club)

This week you might write about your own experience with organizations, particularly ones that have undergone some change. For example, have you been in an RSO that merged with another RSO and if so why? Or you might talk about some place where you've worked and the organization structure there. Finally, you might talk about "transaction costs" in some of your school or work (or social) relationships. How did the transaction costs matter? Again, the idea here is to tie your own experience to the concepts we are studying to give those concepts more meaning for you.
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I founded a badminton club on campus a couple months ago, aiming to organize a club that people in this community can really enjoy playing badminton instead of play for competition. It did not really operated for long because of the funding issue. In one hand, we did not have the money to rent the court as a RSO and supply shuttlecocks. In the other hand, we really did not want to charge our member for $30 dollars for playing badminton, since people can reserve a badminton court at ARC for personal play for free.
This semester, another personal (let's call her A here) contacted me said that she want to take over the club. So we sat down, had a conversation concerning the situation of the club. She decided to take over the club and radically change the structure of the club. She planned to charge members for $25, and ask member to reserve court themselves so that RSO can avoid the cost of renting courts.
The transaction incurred are the following:Time we spent discussing the past situation and future planning of this club with the new president A. Emails she sent out to explain the new structure, rules and fees of this club. Emails she sent out to clarify the new rules, and warnings to reinforce the on-time payment of the fees. Transfer the contact informations we had to A. Filing paperworks at RSO office to switch the presidency and other authorized agents.

1 - About the Economist John Roberts

Image URL: http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/roberts/images/roberts-d-john.jpg


        Dr. John Roberts is a famous Economics professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Stanford. I personally did not know him before this.
        Dr. Roberts received his Ph.D degree from University of Minnesota in 1972. And then, he started to teach at Kellogg Graduate School of Management. What amazed me is that he was so fruitful and brilliant that he received his Professor title only six years after he got his Ph.D when he was 32 years old. And since 1980, he has been a faculty member at GSB at Stanford.
        His current research interest, according to his Stanford webpage, invovle international business, the organization of the firm, and the connection between strategy and organization, which is very similar to what we are or will learn here in ECON490 class.

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