Art Carden (Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis) is Associate Professor of Economics at Samford University's Brock School of Business. In addition, he is a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, a Senior Fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee, and a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute. He blogs at artcarden.com.
Do you have any advice to give to students like me?
1. Be future focused and treat twenty years from now like it's today. The BLS reports median earnings for economists of about $100k/year. Use that number to value your time. Had I done that, the $5/hour or so I earned washing golf clubs and such at Winding Hollow Country Club in my teens wouldn't have looked so enticing. Nor, for that matter, would many extracurricular activities. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have worked in HS or college, I wouldn't have done so many extracurricular activities, and I would have focused every waking moment on my studies.
2. Steep yourself in the classics. Join the great conversation and begin wrestling with Great Books ASAP.
3. Study math, the more the better. In his book The Big Questions, the economist Steve Landsburg points out that the universe is, fundamentally, a mathematical object. The more we learn about math, the better we understand that universe. It's also, for better or for worse, the language of the social sciences. Mike Munger once said that if you want to be a Dostoevsky or Tolstoy scholar you have to learn Russian. If you want to be an economist, you have to learn math.
