What comes to your mind when you think of "International Financial Marketing & Investments"?
"Sounds interesting" comes from a fourth of the people I have met, and "sounds intimidating" comes from the other 75%.
Their reactions are completely understandable because the title of the course is a bit on the heavy side. They may be judging a book by its cover but in reality their judgement is accurate. After two weeks and a day of studying this course, I have to say that it is quite demanding and requires a whole lot of special attention. Studying the context itself is not enough. One should pay equal attention when students are presenting because hearing the feedback from Professor Li is just as valuable. The text itself can be very rich and condense, which makes it overwhelming to read over one chapter at a time. Although the textbook isn't a full sized textbook, it can still be a lot to read and comprehend. A good portion of the text is vocabulary words but even then, the terms can be very complicated and rigorous.
It is definitely a demanding course that requires a lot of concentration and focus. Being exposed to economics for the first time makes the course even more severe. Trying to learn the words, remember them, and then connecting it all together is the first step. Digesting the content is the second. Together, it is very strenuous.
I am positive that the ILC will continue its partnership with Brown in future years. This course is definitely a challenging one and even a little condense for three-weeks. In other words, we are learning so much that some just flys over our head. My TA was actually surprised to hear Professor Li give us such minimal time to finish our last project. She had a month to learn, understand, and apply her knowledge of stocks and mutual funds to put together a portfolio whereas we only had less than a week. Condense, demanding, and challenging are a few adjectives that can sort of describe how rigorous this class is. Here are two photos of what the textbook entails.
Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteIf you take a look at the roster of courses that Brown offers for their summer program you'll see quite a number of them that seem like 'fluff' courses. We've signed our kids up for some of those courses over the years but we've come to the conclusion we're doing you all a disservice by doing so. What good does it do to send you to a top flight university of we're going to enroll you in an easy-peezy course?
Is the Investment course tough? Is the DNA course tough? You bet they are but if we didn't think you were all capable of mastering these courses we wouldn't have spent the sponsors' money sending you 2500 miles away from home
We have faith in you, Stephanie. We have faith in all of you.