The Economist!
Today I received the last issue of my Economist.
“The world isn’t coming to an end…Actually, yours is.”
Interesting…I am wondering whether I should renew it. There is no doubt that The Economist covers the most important news around the world. Before deciding whether I should make the renewal payment, let me tell you the most special class that so far I have had in my MBA experience. Do you know what the most unique experience at Fisher is?
We study a lot? Almost there!
The truth is, in spring quarter, we had a required core course called “Global Environment of Business”. One of the required readings materials of the course is Weekly subscription to “The Economist”. Additionally, we will have weekly quizzes of THE WHOLE MAGAZINE…
Professor Geoffrey Kistruck expected us to “skim” each new weekly issue of The Economist throughout the duration of the course, and be prepared to answer 6 multiple choice questions at the beginning of the Wednesday morning’s class. Although it’s “skim”, there are certainly a lot of works! Everyone felt very stressed, especially for international students—obviously, the wordings in The Economist are not plain English!
After the whole quarter of painstaking trial and error, I have a couple of suggestions of preparing The Economist quizzes for future 1st year MBAs:
1. Read the “The world this week” five times before the quiz and highlight every place, name, and time.
2. When skimming the articles, pay attention to when, where, who, why, and the issue.
3. If you don’t have enough time (and this is usually the case), read the 1st paragraph of each article.
4. Join a study group, and split the articles into several sections. Here is how my team split the magazine:
Individual
The world this week
Section 1
Leaders
Briefing
United States
The Americas
Section 2
Asia
Middle East and Africa
Europe
Section 3
Britain
International
Business
Section 4
Finance and Economics
Briefing
Science and Technology
Books and Arts
Obituary
Honestly, I am not 100% sure about how it helps with the quizzes, but I am certain that the summary that my team prepared really helped me a lot with understanding the key points in the articles.
Finally, if you really really don’t have time to prepare for the quizzes and feel extremely stressed like me, I will suggest that you wake up early in the morning before the class and enhance your short term memory :D I found it very helpful to study The Economist intensively one hour before the quiz.
I hope those tips are helpful---by the way, even you solve the problem of taking the quiz, don’t forget the ultimate goal of reading The Economist. That is, broadening your horizon and staying current with the global news!