My Econ Alias Blog Econ 490 (John Maynard Keynes)

In my Co-Op at Ashland, I was the intern of the engineering team of four engineers and an engineering manager. Our team worked on fifteen different chemical products were each engineer worked with three to four products each. As the intern, I helped each engineer with whichever projects needed to get done for them when it came to managing the production of the chemicals that they were in charge of. In general, the team definitely had a one boss arrangement at the surface. My boss seemed to be very stressed and would always work around ten-hour days for the most part. I would say he was very demanding and there were not enough people on our team handle all that was needed to be done in the time that he wanted. On days that production flowed smoothly, each engineer was still working on trying to continuously improve their processes but the days seemed less stressful for my boss because there were no urgent deadlines or problems going wrong in the plant. Overall, on those day...

I feel like being opportunistic is in my nature and growing up as a son of two immigrants I was taught from an early age that America is the land of opportunity. My parents have told me that “the wheel that squeaks the loudest gets the oil.” I take this to mean that if you want something that you have to be proactive about it and take advantage of every opportunity that is at hand. I was never really taught to let a good opportunity slide by. I do however know one of my friends who passed up on a very high paying job offer that I would never be able to do. One of my old friends in Chemical Engineering passed on an offer from ExxonMobil which is the company that almost every Chemical Engineering major tries to work for. That is because most of ExxonMobil’s locations are in big cities and pay their chemical engineers the highest starting salary. When my friend got this offer he had no other offers at the time and yet he still declined the offer. Many of us were shocked ...

I have been is several organizations, some related to school and some companies through internships and Co-Ops. Each having a different type of culture and many of which have undergone change either when I was a part of the organization or recently before or after I have left the organization. It was interesting to see how each organization dealt with change and the reasons for the change of each organization. Some changes were dues to a common interest, specifically the organization I was involved with on campus. Others changes were made solely made on a cost and profit/ revenue basis, mainly the companies that I have interned or Co-Op for in the past. One of the first organizations that I was involved in on-campus was called Illinois Biodiesel Initiative. The I first joined the organization is was restarting from taking a hiatus of 5 years due to loss of interest and building space provided by the university. There was a loss of interest in people for the organiz...