In which your narrator likens her emotional state to Keynesian economic theory.

You may cite this post as the final stake in the coffin of the argument that I am not a dork.

I am a dork. I embrace it.

So in Macroeconomics, we are learning about Keynesian economic cycles. Keynes' main insight to economics was his modeling (for was it was worth) of short run economic cycles, when prices and wages are "sticky", i.e. they cannot immediately change to reflect other changes in economic variables. A perfect example of this is right now: we are all facing rising costs of fuel but our wages (or student loan money, in my case) remain the same because your employment contract says that you will be paid $X per month this year, and any opportunity for your wage to increase is going to happen next year at your performance review. So now, because gas etc. is more expensive, you have less to spend on other goods, and your total demand for goods and services goes down. In the long run, of course, this all adjusts and the real value of your wage adjusts so you have the same standard of living that you had before. But the adjustment period is not fun.

Keynes also wrote about the multiplier effect. Increased spending, whether by government or the private sector, has a larger effect on income of the entire economy. Say, hypothetically speaking, the government needs to pay for a huge wars in the Middle East and South Asia, and to do this, the government needs to purchase $100 million of fighter jets. That $100 million of expenditure becomes income to the fighter jet factory, which is spent by the employees of that company who received it as wages. Then the fighter jet employees all need to buy supplies for a baby shower in November, so they spend most of that income (they do save a little, the ratio between what they save and what they spend is called the marginal propensity to consume) at Babies R Us for some onesies and those giant strollers that get in my way on the Metro. Then the Babies R Us employees take that income and spend most of it at Costco on beer and floaty things to go floating down the Sandy... etc.

I think you get the point. If an economy has a high propensity to consume (which, you might guess, the American economy does), then this multipler effect is quite large and
when you are spending more, it's great! Income leads to more income and we're all better off, and quite rapidly. The flipside, of course, is that when you are on a downward trajectory (say a spike in the price of oil and food, for example, hypothetically speaking) the effects of reduced spending are spread all that much more quickly.

Why am I talking about this? These classes that I'm taking are really difficult because I am coming face to face with one of my intellectual weaknesses: lack of creativity when it comes to mathmatical analysis. If you can show me step-by-step how to do something, I'm all over it. But when I need to slightly tweak that and apply that in a different way, it's very difficult for me to do. I have never really be trained on how to do that. Conceptually, economics is intuitive for me, and it's pretty easy for me to manipulate graphs and understand why doing A would result in outcome B. Friday I was really struggling even to hold it together, which was troubling to experience, until I realized that it was something I just needed to own and let myself feel and get through because it happens every month and I must accept it.

What helped me was making an analogy in my head that I was experiencing high marginal propensity to feel due to hormonal fluctuations, if you know what I mean. Not only was I on the brink of tears in class on Friday due to frustration, I was also almost in tears on my walk to school yesterday because I was so happy when I think about all the friends I have and how I get to see my amazing boyfriend next week, etc. It's frustrating because I am such a rational person most of the time, and then these moments of wild emotion spring on me which are weird and confusing until I realize that it's manifestation of hormonal shifts that I really have no control over. I must feel them--not keep them inside--and move on.

Other than my high MPF causing emotional volatility, things are good. Brandon's coming to visit this week, which I am so excited for I could pee. This week is also the final week of class, which will be such a relief. What I've heard from alums is that Preterm is the worst it ever gets. Thank god. Now to take a short nap and get to work on macro.