The part of the course that I learned the most in were the talking sessions.  I found the anecdotes provided to be very insightful looks at the things that could be modeled economically.  This was further enhanced for me by reading the book, something that I wish was stressed more in the course.  I found the book to be quite engaging, and wish that more had been done with it.  I imagine I am the only student who feels this way, however.  But, this is because I learn the best, by far, from reading.

I like the blogs.  I like reading other students experiences, perspectives, and ideas.  I think it allows for a lot more creativity than one normally finds in an economics course.  Furthermore, I like the commenting groups.  I found it nice to see how my fellow students were progressing throughout the course; I even read other students' blogs from time to time to see what the buzz was elsewhere.  When I am blogging, I usually read the prompt at the beginning of the week and mull over what I'm going to write.  This week, I have overmulled, since I'm posting this on Saturday night.  At the end of the week, I write up the blog post, occasionally have a friend look it over, and then submit.  I spend up to a half hour per blog post.  As you may have noticed, I like to spice it up with a picture each week to break up the monotony of the text.  I couldn't think of anything that was too relevant, so I am leaving you with the cutest picture that is known to man.

For the Excel, I try to be more proactive.  I do this because if there is a problem that I can't figure out, I have more time to work on it with less stress than if I were doing it Wednesday at 10:30 pm.  I've spent anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours working on an Excel homework.  The latter ended up being  a cell reference problem and not a math problem, which was quite irksome.

Something I would have like to see in the class, as I mentioned before, was more use of the book.  It seemed like an afterthought.  I don't know how to integrate it more into the class, though.  Perhaps linking it somehow with the blog posts?  Professor Arvan seems to like modeling; I do not.  I do not think I am alone on this one.  I would have like to see more numbers and less e-bars and w-tildes.  If theory must be stuck to, I think more work on the board would be helpful.  Yes, our eyes glaze over, but we are only seeing the math once.  I found that I really needed the math to be worked out in front of me rather than just neatly shown in the Excel.