Understanding enconomics with my mind by David

Understanding enconomics with my mind by David - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

When I entered the Economics classroom, I had a feeling it would be the most difficult class I had ever taken. I have a very good understanding of math, but when it came to Economics, all the logic I knew was now required to be applied in ways I had never encountered before.
I understood that Economics covered the basics of money, salaries, and taxes, but concepts like Marginal Cost and Price Elasticity of Demand left me completely confused. At first, I struggled to understand how some people applied the concepts of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics to everyday jobs. Sure, it's necessary to understand the average cost of a certain item or even the profit of a business, but to me, it was like I was learning a foreign language.
When mathematics was a larger part of the class, I thought the work was going to be easier, but I found out that the questions given weren’t easy to understand; trying to connect the formulas to the question was a bit tricky since the wording was often confusing at the time.
When we began learning, the teacher showed us how to do the formulas in practice questions on the review packets they handed out for us to work on while we took notes; it was a bit complex to solve the question when there are many different meanings to the words used in the formulas. It took me a few days to fully understand the concept, but once I did, I was ready for any question that was about the topic. While some of the questions involved figuring out the correct term or even what to fill in the blank, I could solve the math problems without having to struggle to guess what each number meant in the equation. Even then, most of the time I was there, I was doing my best to focus, but it wasn’t as simple to follow.
As the class continued with its different topics and work, I slowly realized one thing. Every question that was given had wanted me to break down the problem into different factors, take my time to analyze the important information of the question, and then put it all together to solve the question. Through patience and determination, I developed the skills to properly examine a question and be a more careful and logical problem solver.
In the end, Economics was much more than the formulas and definitions that were in the topics. It wanted me to think critically, analyze information carefully, and see unfamiliar problems with patience and determination. Although the class was difficult at the beginning, the skills it taught me will continue to help me succeed in both college and my future career.