Deary and I had both gotten perfect scores for our Macroecons essays, so did quite a few others. However, I was quite sure that Deary would make it among the best 15 when Prof Baer read out the names. The 15 essays were made up of the 3 best essays from each TA’s sections. I was jokingly announcing Deary’s name for best essay.

Then, Prof Baer called out my name. EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH… Ok, never mind. I didn’t think I would make it for the best essay award anyway. Prof opens envelope for third best essay and announces my name. WHAT?! This is unbelievable. I don’t even think my essay was good. Everyone knows I know nuts about the economy coz I don’t read the newspapers. Last semester, I even dropped COMM264 coz it focused on the economy and I didn’t even know what was GDP. I was whining to Mum about it and all she said was it’s high time that I flipped through the newspapers. I even failed my Microecons essay! (Ok, that was coz I didn’t prepare much for it.)

But, it’s not like I put in tons of effort on this paper. All I did was to use the concepts I’ve learnt in the class to comment on the article. Like why certain countries are using monetary policies and are reluctant to use fiscal policies although they have been urged to use fiscal policies. I used the pros and cons of monetary policies and fiscal policies to explain that. Not as if I plunged into some profound explanation and used examples of well-known company X or Y in the essay.

I’m not trying to be modest. I really know nuts about Econs. Half the time I have to ask Deary to explain certain things and he can practically rattle off all the Econs stuff. He can link A to B in Economic terms and I’m like “Whatever manz, as long as gahmen (government) give me money, I am happy. No money, not happy.”

So, what’s the prize?

A book. DUH. What kind of book? Something that I never ever read. Well, unless I have no reading material when I’m doing the big one and this happens to be the closest thing to me. Ok, maybe for the sake of ECON103 and for the good people who think my essay was worthy of third prize, I will read it. No promises though.

By the way, Deary deserves some credit too. He helped me pick out some articles and I chose the one I wanted among those to write on. Maybe I claimed the winning article. Maybe if he had used that article, he would have gotten ‘Best Essay’ instead. *shrugs*