2007-09-14 | Teaching is to be enjoyed, and so is studying. Grades should only be secondary. Today, I received an email from a student who is currently on exchange at York University at Toronto, Canada. Her email (below) made my day.
At the time when they are given the work, most students hate me (or at least, they are not thankful). Most do not realizing the assignments are designed to help them.
Foundation and good habits (say, reading newspapers and observing and explaining interesting economic phenomena) are better built in their first year of university life. I remember in this year's orientation, a colleague of mine told the freshman that building a good habit is important. I guess only few freshmen realized how important building a good habit is to them. If students were left alone, will they build good habit? If kids are left alone, will they build good habit? As a father of an eight-year-old, I know the answer. Extremely unlikely!
Teachers can help! Good foundation and good habits can be built through course requirements! Not easy to insist in doing so, however. Most students do not thank teachers for their tough course requirement, at least not when they are taking the course.
I am really glad that there is one student who finally find my courses useful some time after she is done with my course. Thanks to Christina. This is the kind of email that keeps me going.
As I always say: Teaching is to be enjoyed, and so is studying. Grades should only be secondary.
> Hi Dr. Wong,
>
> Greetings from your previous student(HKU-SEF)at Schulich Business
> School in Toronto!
>
> I took two courses from you last year which were introductory to
> microeconomics and economic data analysis in two separate semesters.
>
> Well, to tell you the truth, these two courses took lots and lots of
> my time last year like preparing for the tutorial discussion which was
> required for introductory to microeconomics and working hard on the
> after-chapter exercises which were essential for the understanding of
> economic data. And you know, they were even put on the list of
> "hardest to learn courses" by many of my fellow classmates.
>
> But I didn't realize how much I benefitted from these two courses
> until I went to Schulich for exchange two weeks ago.
>
> I still remember in your first lecture, you said that economy is a
> kind of language which needs practicing day by day and this is exactly
> what we have to do today.
>
> The discussion on hot economic topics in the first semester's tutorial
> helps me develop the habit of reading newspaper and trying to
> understand each economic issue on my own. So, when the professor in
> Schulich asked me about my views on sub-prime mortgage crisis in
> U.S.A, I at least know what happened and could say something about it.
>
> Besides, my background knowledge in tools of economic data analysis
> greatly helps me learn more advanced theories with the year 4 students
> in Schulich.
>
> Thank you so much for teaching me the basic theories of economics, and
> more importantly, letting me acknowledge the skills on how to learn
> economics well in the future.
>
>
> Best Regards,
> Zhang Li, Christina
>
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