Hi everyone.
To be frank, I was postponing this article as I did not know where to begin with sharing my mixed feelings about my second course. I will write it as it is and maybe you will learn something from my experiences.
The second course is called Production Economics and it is not obligatory for my programme (Environmental Economics and Management), however, I found out that after registration into this course and then I did not want to deal with changing course as it seemed to be complicated. Most of my fellow-students from the previous course were registered into Leadership & Sustainability and it was also offered to them automatically instead of Production Economics. I was confused that people in the same study programme are given different courses but I did not try to change as even Production Economics sounded appealing to me.
I missed the beginning of the course as I was in Copenhagen and then I realised that many students decided to change this course. I suppose that the main problem that many students wanted to change this course was because previously, we did not know that we have a possibility of changing the course which was offered to us and as the Production Economics started with overwhelming formulas, equtions and derivatives, I understood that many students got a feeling that this is not what they expected. I have to admit that it was not pleasant beginning of the course for me as our teacher enjoyed long formulas without explaining the real meaning and the pace was fast, too.
Anyway, I decided not to change the course and stay with Produtions Economics due to several reasons:
- it is hard to make a consistent picture of the course from few lessons
- both courses were already running and I did not like the feeling that I missed a lot even in another subject
- I did not want to deal with formalities related to change of course
- I took it as a challenge which I did not want to give up 😀
So, it was few sentences which I considered essential to mention and now to the content of Production Economics.
As I have already mentioned, in the beginning I was a bit lost in all those formulas and methods we used and it was difficult for me to follow the lectures. But by the time, everything has settled and finally now, I can see the purpose of what we are doing and I find it useful.
In the past, I have come across Lagrange Multipliers, but in this course, it is the main topic and we use Lagrange all the time. Lagranges´s function comes in handy when we want to solve a function subject to constraints. And due to all resources are limited, we all have to face some constraints and hence, we learn how to formulate a models which reflect reality. We apply modeling techniques and simulate them to solve problems in a planning environment, we analyze economic problems which agricultural firms have to face.
Part of this course are group assignments (case studies), where examples of changing environmental regulations, policy interventions, change of technology and others are included and we have to reclect impacts of those changes on our model.
In January, we will give presentations and take an exam and I know that I have a lot to learn, but at least now I can see the meaning of those models and formulas. I will provide you with overall evaluation in January. Lastly, I suppose it is important to mention that it is only my subjective impression about this course and many students attending this course found it interesting from its beginning.
I am curious what the final thoughts about this course will be, too. In 2018, we will have a look at it 😀
Hejdå, Denisa
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