After two days of indecision, I did take the early final exam after all earlier this afternoon. Before getting to the reason why I made the decision, let me first talk about how I think I performed in the exam. First, I think I did pretty quickly and accurately answering all those multiple choice questions, since a list of possible questions was given to us prior to that. Coming to the last question, I thought I had the 7 principles of economics in my head. I manage to list all of them but one. I even listed them in order but number 5 seemed to just slip through my mind at that time. The time was 3.45pm and Principle 5 still did not come into mind. In the end, I gave up the thinking process and turned in the paper. The reason why I did not spend more time thinking about the principle is because I had to get to work at 4.00 pm. Having more than an hour left to think about that one principle, I’m sure I’ll remember it eventually. However in turn I’ll be late to work and have demerits of my work points. Being late means one point of my record and after the sixth point, I’ll be fired. The cost of something is what you give up to get it, the cost of getting that extra point or two is getting closer to being fired since I had two points off already. I value the point that I missed in the exam, but it is more important for me from preventing myself of getting another 1/6 closer to being fired from work.
Next the reason why I took the early final exam was because I wanted to spend less time studying during finals week. My folks will be coming to visit all the way from Malaysia, and I would like to take them around Columbus. People face tradeoffs. Although I only made my decision to on Thursday, which means there was only one day for me to review, I was willing to trade in some of my sleeping time to study. Instead of turning into bed at midnight as usual, I studied till 1.30 am. It means I traded my hour and a half for more hours next week to take my folks around. Also, believing that I did a pretty good job at the exam, I think I made a good deal with myself.
