Interdisciplinary: Tomlin Econmoics

This may seem repetitive, but I do not think that students fully comprehend how useful Ms. Tomlin's economic class is going to be to us in the real-world. Ms. Tomlin is making dependent young adults into independent and productive members of this society. Most recently, we had our year end project, which was the stock market. Essentially, students had $10,000 divided between 1-4 members of the group. The students would then purchase stocks based on their closing price on the date of April 30. After making initial purchases, students would track their stocks performance every week for 6 weeks. It was not as simple as buying stocks, however. Ms. Tomlin required us to research different companies and make portfolios, with every imaginable detail you could think of, from the 52 week high and low to recent news reports regarding the company's movements. I was always resistant when it came to stocks even though some of my family does it. I just am scared taking the risk because I was told that if you don't have a certain amount of money, it is very hard to make money. Ms. Tomlin helped us with that as well by saying that we should not invest money if we do not have the means to have that money as disposable income. Disposable income is the amount of money you have which can go away without you feeling it. The problem with me is that I can't even let a penny go away without feeling it. Judging by our performance, we came out pretty good. We made roughly $750 dollars in three weeks. I think what my family said about having a lot of money in order to make a dip in the stock market was right though. When I made the spread sheet Ms. Tomlin required, I saw how having just a little more money could drastically change the total amount in the outcome. For example, if one bought 1 million stocks at $1 per share, and that stock went to $2 per share. The investor would have made $1 million profit. However, if the investor would have invested only $10,000, they would have only made $10,000. By actually being a part of it, students were able to see the proportions, and also how much money they would need in order to start investing. Along with that, students were able to assess if it was worth putting money in the stock market based on the profit yielded.