Post due 10/16 Future Income Risk

When looking at my current life choices, I would say the primary factor would by my future income risk in mind. When I chose my major, Economics, I chose it because I knew there were a plethora of opportunities in a variety of markets with good salaries for my future. Obviously that is a big picture one, but even when I take supporting classes, I try to choose classes that may help me out in the future rather than taking typical blow off classes. For example, next semester I will be taking business administration classes, specifically BADM 300, business law, in order to learn about patent law and other scenarios information that may come in handy if I happen to want to start my own business. This obviously affects my future income risk because if I start a successful small business and grow, I become more financially stable with, hopefully, a larger income.

Someone I was able to watch manage his income risk would be my brother. Unfortunately, he was less inclined to work hard in school and complete school to the best of his ability. However, he is a terrible example of trying to solidify future income risk because now he has a pretty terrific job in the city working for an options exchange. There is a chance that he did in face keep his future income risk in mind when making all these decisions. Perhaps he knew that he was a brilliant kid, which he is, and he could make a lot of money without doing well and applying himself in school. Although he probably could have made more money in the future had he applied himself, he weighed his options and decided that slacking off and using the time he would have used on studying on other things was more productive for him at the time. Another option is that his future income risk was very low and he just got lucky. Anything is possible.

Illinibucks

If “Illinibucks” were an item at U of I, I could see a variety of uses, anywhere from jumping in line at Espresso Royale to being able to register for classes earlier. These uses are very appealing to those many people who don’t want to wait. Expanding on where you could use the Illinibucks, you could really be able to use them at any school event. You could use them to get into the football games quicker in order to reserve your better spot in our student section. That is appealing for those who really appreciate going to our football games and have school spirit. This could also be used to Orange Krush. From my understanding, this group does not have official seats, but go on a first come fist serve basis for those who belong to the organization. With Illinibucks, you could get into the stadium quicker and reserve your front row seat to see your favorite Big Ten team. You could even use them at private establishments, most notably on campus, Chipotle or the Bars. At peak hours, you could wait from 30 min to an hour to get that precious Chipotle Burrito or even longer to get into a busy night at Red Lion. Both establishments could create a separate line that accepts Illinibucks to dodge the hassle of waiting in their regular line.

Personally, I would never see myself using Illinibucks for the reason is I would prefer to sell them. For me, waiting in line or waiting to sign up for classes is rather irrelevant because I don’t mind all that much. Typically I’m amongst friends and the wait is a pleasant excuse to make casual conversation and catch up. Most of the classes I have to take are a selection amongst many, for example, in my economics major, I can take an assortment of Econ 300 and 400 level classes, so if some fill up, there are plenty of other options to take that still interest me. The only thing I could see myself using this currency for would be possibly getting better seats for basketball season tickets, although seeing the way they have been playing this year, selling them is a significantly better option. If the administrator price for Illinibucks was too high, using a basic supply and demand graph, we can see that this would create a surplus of Illinibucks on the market as the demand for people to purchase them would be lower than the supply of them on the market. This means no one would sell them and find uses for them themselves. If the price were set too low, the supply would exceed the demand, and people would not want to sell their Illinibucks for that chosen price. This could create a black market for Illinibucks where people sell them on a different market for more of a profit.

Blog Post Due 9/25 Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

A team I am currently involved in would be the executive board of my house. Although not thought of as a typical team, we do all the things teams do to accomplish goals through working together. The team consisted of 7 guys, five graduating in 2016 and two graduating in 2017. Each of us had our own individual role on the team. Our Vice President of Communication, Martin, was in charge of sorting the mail, getting packages, and setting up buying snacks for our Monday Funday every Monday. Our Vice President of Finance, Jeremy, was in charge of budgeting our house dues and making sure all the electricity, water, cable, and Internet bills are paid on time. Our Internal Vice President, Mark, was in charge of fixing things that break in the house, such as toilets, showers, and any fuses that might go out. Our Administrative Vice President, Sam, is in charge of keeping the house clean. Our Vice President of New Scholars, Mario, is in charge of making the freshmen class successfully transition to college life through activities like study hours and fun games they played. Our Executive Vice President, Brian, was in charge of social events. Finally, there was me, the President. I was a jack-of-all-trades, helping out all the remaining positions, however my main job is to be the main liaison to the Western Golf Association, the people who pay our tuition. I was entrusted with the grades of all the scholars, along with their University Information, and had final say on anything that occurred through our executive board.

The five of us that were graduating in 2016 had all been close friends since our inception into the house in 2012, so we were not foreign to the idea of working together. The two 2017s we had only knows for about a year and a half, but their easy going attitude made it easy to work with them. In addition to all this, I was the only new member of the executive board who had served on the previous one.

Although Mario and Sam, the two 2017s, weren’t our age, it seemed that they were a perfect fit in our puzzle. After that, we all settled into the roles we wanted, and some we weren’t expecting. For example, because of my small stature, I have never been quite the “intimidator,” however, because Mario had to work with the freshmen on a day to day basis, they had to think of him more as a friend so they felt comfortable going to him if they had a problem, and because of this, I had to be the bad cop. Whenever the freshmen were misbehaving, Mario would text me and I would have to set them straight. Although never a the role I expected playing, it still worked out.

Something that immediately brought us all together and allowed us to become the successful eboard we all wanted to be was the financial situation we were left with after the previous executive board. We were left with about half of what we were expecting to be left with, 90% of which we couldn’t spend on anything but utilities, cable, and Internet. We spent many a night figuring out ways to solve the problem and to still have a successful semester without breaking our budget. Through a lot of blood, sweat, and teamwork, we were able to balance our budget but more importantly, we passed an early test of our abilities. I can honestly say that we would not have become the eboard we are today without this experience.

After this, the communication between all of us was flawless. We all knew the state of the house budget at all times, we knew who was and was not doing their work when it came to house cleanliness, we knew what freshmen were doing poorly, and because of that, we could all work together to remedy these situations. I would describe us most as Mintzberg’s adhocracy, which is described as loose and flexible. Although all of us had specific jobs, we all moved around to where we were needed and played rolls that we had to in order for the best outcome. After the fiscal disaster we combined forces to deal with, there was an understanding that we are a capable bunch and no one had to be scared leaving some of their responsibilities to any other member.

That also relates to Katzenbach and Smith’s idea of team structure. They stated that a team structure develops through individuals contributing to the collective good of the whole group, and that’s exactly what we did. As an executive board, we all wanted to put as much effort into our jobs in order to make the house and us better off as a whole. Although I was the President and leader of the board, that did not mean I was any more important or capable of doing certain jobs than anyone else on the board. Everyone contributed to the betterment of the group, and this team dynamic is something Katzenbach and Smith touched on a lot in their version of teamwork.

Blog Post Due 9/18 Opportunism

When running for positions on executive board in the Evans house here at Illinois, it is a long arduous process consisting of giving a speech, waiting for your opponents to give speeches, then waiting for the house to say positives and negatives about you and the people you are running, and finally the vote. During the speech you are allowed to talk about anything you would like, including your candidates mishaps over the years. The day before elections, someone came home drunk from the bar and threw all the trashcans down the stairwell, something the house doesn’t like to deal with, as it is hard to clean up. That person, we shall call him “Martin,” was also running for secretary. Only three people knew Martin threw the trashcan, him, his opponent we shall call her “Nadia,” and myself. In her speech, Nadia could have told the house that Martin had thrown the cans, and in turn won the election by a landslide. However, she withheld that information and did not act opportunistically.

Speculating as to why, I believe Nadia wanted to win the position on her own merit. There is a lot of pride that comes with representing your house on the executive board, and I do not believe she wanted to win in a “dirty” fashion, I believe she wanted to win because people thought of her as truly the best candidate. Another possibility would be that she was a friend with Martin and she did not want to tarnish his reputation amongst the house. I believe these two things are rather different and do not amount to the same thing. When Nadia did not mention this in her speech, she was acting honorably, trying to win on her own merit, however in the other scenario, she was acting out of what I believed to be pity.

Blog Post Due 9/11 Organizations

My experiences with organizations have been quite extensive. The one I would like to specifically focus on is my work with the Evans Scholar Foundation. This organization is close to my heart as it is a scholarship that I am a part of that is sending me to school for free. Without them, it is unlikely I would have been able to attend a school as great as the University of Illinois. Currently, the scholarship is going through some aggressive expansion. With currently 870 students enrolled in school through the Evans program, they are trying to get to 1,000 by the year 2020. In the past few years, the scholarship has built new houses in order to house more scholars in Indiana, Miami, and Ohio State, and most recently; they have opened a new chapter in the University of Oregon. Something else they are doing is creating a new program to begin the next generation of scholars even earlier, the Fairway to the Future program. It is essentially the Evans Scholar program except to private high schools.

With all this change, the Evans incurs some transaction costs. Most of their costs consist of search costs, searching what viable candidates there are for the Evans program, along with searching for new schools in order to open chapters. In addition to that, they obviously have to pay for all the new houses they build or renovate. In these cases, they second party to which they are exchanging the transaction costs change. When looking for new schools to open up chapters, the second agent in the transaction will be the schools themselves, while when dealing with renovating or building houses, the other agent would be the construction companies and the real estate agents.

As president of the house, I was privy to see behind the scenes of the Evans Scholar foundation on multiple occasions. Even though I was not directly involved in the expansion, I did help out in many of the fundraising efforts they have throughout the year, the largest one being the BMW Open. Every year, the scholarship puts on a golf event that professionals play in that raises money for the scholarship. As the scholarship continues to grow, it relies heavily on this, the largest fundraising event of the year. This means the event itself has to continue to grow to match the growth of the scholarship. This incurs another transactional cost as now the Scholarship has to find more and more sponsors for the event so they incur as little to their bottom line as possible and maximize the amount of donations that the scholarship can put towards paying caddy tuition. I was personally involved in helping sell more tickets and finding volunteers to help staff the event. Thankfully, the event went off without a hitch and they raised more money than ever before.