Poor Economics

The three years I spent at the London School of Economics were critical to my decision of never, ever studying economics again.

You will frequently catch this one moment in the life story of any creative:

“I finished studying Business Administration, but it just wasn’t for me.”

“I tried advertising for a year or two, but I needed to do my own thing.”

“I tried to work at a company, but I had to quit.”

This itch, this oft-cited irritation—what causes it?

1. We don’t truly find the work important.

I don’t think I was ever uninterested in economics. It’s just that no one explained to me why it was important.

College assumed—and rightfully so, perhaps—that if I had signed up to study economics and management, I must have already thought them important.

And so I found myself in a blizzard of Keynesian sticky wages and Adam’s invisible hands, options and derivatives, shorting and put options and going long, and shit I don’t even remember after spending hundreds of hours studying it.

In fact, it wasn’t until I watched The Big Short, many years after college, that I realised how significant (and good-looking) the financial crisis of 2008 had been.

His quant didn’t even speak English.

And it wasn’t until I started reading Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo—last year!—that I understood how utterly engrossing macroeconomic policy could be.

Alas, for most of my time at uni, I couldn’t have explained to you why I was studying what I was.

2. We have no interest in the extra credits.

As soon as I’d finish Managerial Economics, or Introduction to Finance, or whatever the hell, I’d tear off to attend rehearsals at the LSE Drama Society, or to shop for a new dress at Primark.

I never read around the topic, or studied for a moment extra. The first chance I got to escape, I escaped.

Learned some British sports too.

By contrast, some of my classmates who were genuinely interested in the subject read the Financial Times with their morning coffee.

In their free time, they participated in things like the LSE ‘Alternative Investments Conference.’ (I suppose it’s for when all of your main investments have failed.)

Now, I understand this for the obvious signal it was. Since now, I too spend my weekends pouring over old screenplays and excitably digging up word etymologies.

The things we retire to, escape into, can be very telling of our true interests.

(Even as I write this, my husband who does work in finance—thank God one of us made that worthy sacrifice—is voluntarily watching a 2.5-hour podcast on India’s economy. After dinner. To relax.)

3. We wouldn’t mind the C-suite, but hate the junior jobs.

I didn’t apply for a single corporate job after college.

The hours of investment-banking interns terrified me. I’d heard of the Magic Taxi, where you take a cab home from work at sunrise, keep it waiting as you shower and change, and ride right back to work.

Consulting—on trains forever to places like ‘Slough’ and ‘Bristol’—held no glitter.

And after a summer internship at Oglivy and Mather in Mumbai, I’d learned that even advertising/marketing wasn’t the creative Mecca I’d assumed it to be; the salaries were peanuts, the only consolation offered was marijuana, and the clients paid for our obedience, not our creativity.

I had dreamed the big dream—C-suite and pencil skirts and bonuses—but found I had no appetite for the path that led to it.

(Now, in this other life, I’ll meet people who say they want to be published authors. What they do not want, however, is to sit on a desk for a year or two, unpaid, grappling with their foggy thoughts and unruly sentences, revising draft after draft.)

Still, I can’t regret my time at the LSE, for two true and contradictory reasons:

(a) it gave me some of my best friends, and

(b) it showed me that I didn’t belong there.

Well then, where did I belong?

(If you even believe in such a thing.)

Until next time,

Sukriti.

SPICE Traders: Did you enjoy what you studied at college? And if you could go back in time, would you change it?