Movie Night—Or Not

We divided into groups last week in our macroeconomics class, but we decided on topics for our group projects today. My group consists of me, Emily, Ellen, Johnny, and Thomas. After much deliberation, we narrowed our pick from BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries to just China, allowing us to examine one country’s economic growth in more depth than we would have with four countries. China’s economic development is also very relevant to our current society. Our topic statement was “Globalization is the driving force in China’s economic growth”, but we have yet to take a side. We are presenting on Wednesday so we have a little more than one week to complete a quality PowerPoint and presentation. I’m confident our group can accomplish this.

We covered chapter 8, which was on the different types of unemployment including frictional, structural, and cyclical, and reviewed the homework due today. Unemployment is a concern because without jobs, people don’t have the income to consume, leading businesses to fail and lay off workers, which increases unemployment and leads to a downward economic spiral. After two hours of lecture, our TA, John, came in and reviewed homework problems for the remaining hour. This assignment was slightly more difficult than the first and required more thought put into each question. John clarified our uncertainty and helped me better understand the material.

We were supposed to have a movie night tonight to make up for the class we will miss next Monday due to the Fourth of July. Instead, we had a brief night with half an hour of Blood Diamond before the screen retracted and the DVD stopped playing. John tried to fix it with no luck so we had to postpone the movie. This was terribly unfortunate because the movie stopped at a cliff hanger, leaving me at the edge of my seat. I guess I will have to wait for another day to finish the intense movie. Hopefully we will resume watching it tomorrow.