Graduate School Applications To Places I Did Not Get Into

After pursuing education for the last eighteen years, I have decided that I really enjoy learning. For the last five years while I have been in college from August to May, my favorite subject has been textbook economics. Then in the summer, I would go home and work with my father. He called my summer session, “learning economics the hard (or real) way.” After my first year of graduate school, I tried to explain to him that when you add calculus to economics it becomes extremely difficult. He wisely laughed at me.

After returning for my second year of graduate school, I finally realized that my father was right. Textbook economics is wonderfully interesting, as one of my former professors said, “microeconomics is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.” It has allowed me to generate ideas that have helped my father’s businesses. It has allowed me to evaluate my surroundings and see order and disorder that the vast majority does not or refuses to see. Knowing the whys and hows behind the everyday world is an addicting drug that is hard to quit; you understand that knowing everything is impossible, but you just keep striving for more knowledge. But the fact of the matter is my father is the real economist. He is the entrepreneur. He is the innovator that tears down the current constraints of society and pushes its limits to truthfully ‘make the world a better place.’ No matter how many years that I spend in school, he will always know more real economics than me.

Towards the end of my last semester at Bridgewater College, a future medical doctor disdainfully asked me “why do you want to be an economist?” I replied, “I want to really help people.” With this attitude, I went into an agricultural and applied economics’ program. I have since found out that agricultural economics’ does help people, but I am not convinced that they help people in the right way. Their idea that the impoverished need government programs, concentrated on agriculture, and paralyzed by bureaucratic red tape does not sit well with me. Many practitioners of agricultural economics have taken a ‘Robin Hood’ approach, stealing money from the rich, developed world taxpayers, and giving to a sub-sample of the poor, developing world and domestic farmers, while taking their middle man’s cut and allowing bureaucratic inefficiency to seize its share. Again, many of these programs do help people, but faith in the market and individuals have given way to faith in the ‘good intentions’ of self-interested bureaucrats.

These three poorly linked paragraphs tell the story of where I stand today. I am still thrilled to pursue knowledge. I still believe in the study of economics and its ability to unlock innovation and increase global welfare. But I cannot continue to study mainstream economics. I cannot continue to put blinders on and accept the flawed world that surrounds me, while I sit in my office creating intellectually stimulating but useless models. I cannot allow my father to be treated with indifference while agriculturalists and other special interests receive special attention that my father is forced to financially support. I still want to be an economist, but I want to do it the right way. I want to champion the market as the ultimate problem solver, not find ways to circumscribe it. I want to teach people to truly understand the beauty within the mutual benefit of exchange, and I want to enact policies that insure free exchange.

Simply, the economics department at George Mason offers me the best opportunity to find myself and meet my goals. It offers me the chance to continue to learn while being true to my father and myself.