Econ Professor Takes Students on his “Journey Through Time”

78

Author: Erik Parker, Torch Staff

Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics, Giorgio Secondi was featured on Tuesday, April 15 at a Last Lecture Series talk. He lectured about what he considered most important to almost 40 students.The Last Lecture Series offers professors the opportunity to give lectures as if they were the last lectures they would ever give, on whatever topic they choose. Secondi chose to speak about his early life, teaching, Occidental College and the future.

He began with a slideshow entitled “Giorgio’s Journey through Time,” in which he showed photographs of himself over the years. Secondi said that at age 10 he opened his first bank account, a significant moment in a future economist’s life. At age 13, teachers told his parents he would be better off leaving school and going to a vocational school. “I clearly wasn’t smart enough to make it through college,” he said was what his teachers thought.

Secondi said he stayed in school and was a 17-year-old “badass” who played the drums, wrote poetry and wore unfashionably long hair. At the end of high school, he said he was most interested in literature and classical music, but his parents pushed him to study business and economics. “Accounting is the most boring class ever invented,” he said.

The dissatisfaction of studying business made Secondi try to drop out to become a musician. He then took an economics course for the first time. He said this changed his mind about his studies because he enjoyed it so much.

Secondi then spoke about his experiences studying abroad in the United States. Secondi was born and raised in Milan, Italy. “It turned out to be a lot of fun,” he said of his time at a New York university. He said it was a “real challenge” because of his English skills at the time, and told the audience humorous stories about mispronunciations and misunderstood American idioms.

After studying abroad, Secondi said he decided to do further studies in the United States. At age 25, he started teaching macroeconomics, which he said was “love at first sight.” He showed a video to the audience of him teaching “Monetization.”

This led him to explain his teaching style and beliefs about teaching. “This idea of the lecture didn’t appeal to me,” Secondi said. “I try to ask a lot of questions in my classes.”

“Teaching is ultimately about love,” he said. Secondi said the exchange of ideas requires trust and people should like the people they trust and work with. “I also find it’s important to have a sense of humor . . . see the funny side of things,” he said.

Next, Secondi talked about teaching economics. “A lot of people think economics is about making lots of money and screwing over the little guy,” he said. Secondi said economics teaches valuable lessons about trade-offs and incentives. “It’s the teaching of a thinking process,” he said.

Secondi spoke about what he likes about Occidental College and what he would like to see improved. “There’s a friendliness to Oxy students that I’ve always enjoyed,” he said. “They are sincere, simple . . . not so competitive.” Additionally, he said he likes Oxy’s small size and his colleagues who acted as mentors to him when he was new to the college ten years ago. However, Secondi said he would like to see smaller class sizes and more student-faculty interaction outside of the classroom. “I wish advising was taken more seriously at this school,” he said.

This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.

Loading

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here