Thursday, September 03, 2009

Economics

Reading a post on Steve's blog reminded me of an experience I had myself.

In sixth form I too studied Economics. I did the 'O' level in one year (I have a B grade Steve) and in the second year went on to do the 'A' level, where I didn't do quite so well ;-) As part of our course we were encouraged to buy an entire set of essay answers written by a professor of Economics from the London School of Economics, which I of course did.

Having done well enough to get to university I followed a degree that required a certain amout of Economics knowledge so in the first year we had lectures in Economics. The module was assessed by an assignment, the title of which was 'What is the function of the Bank of England?'

Now, there was a girl who had not only been at my school, but also in my 'A' level Economics class doing the same course as me, and we were the only two in the entire year group who had ever studied Economics before. We decided that, rather than re-invent the wheel, we would just copy our 'What is the function of the Bank of England?' essay from our set of essay answers written by a professor of Economics from the London School of Economics because, frankly, we had a dozy old codger for lectures who wasn't even going to notice that she'd received two identically written essays.

We expected A grades, as you would. Disappointing then when my copy of the professor of Economics essay was graded at C- and my friends identical copy of the professor's essay got a B+. Go figure

1 comment:

Cosmo said...

I did A level Economics...for about two weeks. On returning the very first essays of the course the teacher announced to the class, "Well ladies and gentlemen, we have our first zero of the term."

The rest, as they say, is history. Actually it wasn't history, it was English Lit because the girl I fancied in the economics class was also taking English.