Hold ups, opportunism and bad choices

Taking a leap at any opportunity is an action that is filled with uncertainty. Given a situation such as a job, an interview, or anything else that may have an adverse effect on the person making the choice. Very recently, there was an incident where I felt like I had to make a decision. They say that hindsight is always 20/20, and in light of my current circumstances, my decision was a regretful one.

Earlier this year, I was working at a nonprofit organization. My inspiration for getting the job was more financial than anything career-oriented. The position was part-time and payed a little better than minimum wage. As a student going through college with family funding, I thought this decision to be a good one; it was a minuscule way of paying my family back for the exorbitant amount of money they were spending on my education and the high hopes they had for my future.

The interview went smoothly, and I was given the job until the end of the semester. I would have to reapply once the schools around Champaign finished summer vacation and began the new school year, but I was glad to have been given the opportunity and responsibility to work with such people. People who are very different in their lifestyle and work ethic from myself.

Since sophomore year, I lost all my passion and drive to excel in any endeavor, and being surround by a crowd of antitheses at my new job was a wake up call for me. It opened my eyes to the circumstances of my colleagues and inspired me to give it my all in both the office and in all my classes. Unfortunately, running after your aspirations is easy, but keeping up with it is a far more difficult sprint to win.

As time went on I realized that I was torn between work, studies, and familial responsibilities. It became a chore keeping up all three, and I feel very fortunate to have been given circumstances where I was able to juggle that trio. I may have not been able to keep up with everything in my optimal capacity, but I was happy that I didn't allow myself to give up.

I started out as a model employee, being up-to-date with everything going on and volunteering for difficult, time-consuming projects. My initial surge of efficiency impressed my supervisors, and they decided to pile on the tasks on me as the months passed by. Near the end of the semester, I had become much slower, and my performance had taken such a dive that I felt as though I was a burden to this organization. Despite these thoughts and the disappointment I thought my supervisors must have been going through, I carried on working to the best of my ability.

My employer suggested I work for the summer as well, and she offered to increase my wage. My familial responsibilities had inflated massively between the spring and summer semesters, though, and I was intimidated by the seemingly daunting task of a 9-5 job while maintaining both a summer course and a new life.

This intimidation came to a breaking point when a new employee came to work one day. This individual was working better than me in every aspect of the job, and in the time between the spring and summer that I was not allowed to work, this person had been employed in my place and had, unfortunately, made a mess of some of the most important projects that were given to me.

My supervisor expected me to work with both my new colleague and the Manager at the office. Two weeks passed before I found myself frustrated at how lost I felt. The company was going through a transitioning phase, and soon we would be moving to a new office. My emotions, coupled with the amount of work that was required for a successful transition, broke my resolve to be a part of the organization. I felt as though I was dragging everyone behind, and decided to quit.

My employer offered me a different position where I could work from home. I declined and told her that I had to concentrate on my education and admitted to feeling like I was being a hindrance. A month after my departure, billboards of the organization popped up all over town, and their new office was a much larger, more sophisticated one - a testament to the astounding amount of work and determination from the employees.

Given a few more weeks, I believe I could have been a part of this transition. It seems as though everything that was keeping me from working smoothly has disappeared, and the new environment is even more successful than the last. I believed my resignation to be the better option, or rather one which I considered to be the ethical one, considering my feelings at the time, but I feel like I let go of an opportunity where I could work in an environment that supports individuality, where my supervisors were more like elder siblings and the founder of the organization was more like a mother figure than a boss. I doubt I will find a job even remotely similar to that anytime in the future.

While this may not seem like the perfect example of taking an opportunity, but if you think about opportunity, it comes down to a choice: A or B. More likely it is to either go for something or draw back from it. Drawing back from my job feels like I missed an opportunity that was golden, one that may not arrive on a silver platter like it did once before.

Experience with Expanding Organizations

Earlier this year, I decided to get a part-time job as an Office Assistant at a seemingly small educational nonprofit organization in downtown Champaign. While to me, it initially appeared to be a small institution, it was much larger in its operations and had most of Champaign-Urbana's schools affiliated with it. It was the first time I had given an interview, and an interesting aspect of this particular one was to interview a different pool of applicants applying there that same day. After a successful day, it was a week of training before I actually began working in my position as office assistant.

My only real experience with organizations prior to this was in the position of Treasurer of an RSO that focused on subcontinental culture and history. It was a small organization, but we were an ambitious lot and we found ways to grab a massive audience and create very successful projects where it was possible to showcase the various shades of the vivid spectrum that made the subcontinental countries what they are.

I mention both of these because the aspects of time and transition within organizations affected the RSO very differently from the nonprofit organization.

The nonprofit organization developed into a much larger firm over the course of the three months I worked there, while the RSO was disbanded despite all our efforts to keep our organization functional and operating. The main problem was its adaptability to the effect of time and the nature of an organization as propagation changes it.

A transaction cost is defined as the cost incurred through an economic exchange, or the cost of market participation by an entity. I experienced different aspects of transaction costs through the two different entities.

From the RSO, we had issues with costs pertaining to search and information, purely out of lack of manpower and resources, while the same issues made us fall short of avoiding the potential policing and enforcement costs that were incurred. In a way, though, it may also be the case that our operations system itself was flawed, and something that was flawed from its foundations can rarely cope without drastic change. 

From my nonprofit organization, however, the above costs were well-taken care of through the specialized positions that were given to the more experienced and educated members of the firm. It was mostly a pseudo-flat hierarchy, since there was an established one, but when it came to actually operating, it was not something that was strictly followed, due to the ambience and nature of the people that worked there. It was a very relationship-based workspace, and that helped in making an environment suitable for individuals to find their own inspiration to increase productivity.

An Overview of Amy Finkelstein

Amy Finkelstein is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently the head of a research center at MIT for important issues regarding domestic policy.

Professor Finkelstein has been awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2012, an award given annually to the economist under the age of 40 who has contributed most significantly to economic thought and knowledge, among various other awards. She is one of the two Principal Investigators for the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, an evaluation of the impact of medicaid coverage to low income, uninsured adults. She is also the co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics. She has her own Curriculum Vitae included on her MIT website, which displays a massive variety of publications and awards, along with a stellar record of her contributions towards economics to date.

I was unaware of Professor Amy Finkelstein and her achievements prior to this class. However, her achievements are truly magnificent and it is an excellent showcase on the use of everything we have learned about the mathematical applications and importance of such in the real world.

Cited Work: http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/afink

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