ECON 2010

Contrary to popular belief, I didn't like this course and didn't find Elzinga to live up to his reputation. Elzinga is very monotone and I had a very hard time staying engaged and paying attention. He also brushes over every important topics during lecture and rambles on, not necessarily about anything you are going to be tested on. He also doesn't take questions during class. The only place I learned anything substantial was in my discussion with my TA once a week; my TA basically is the reason I understand Econ. I hated this class, don't take it with Elzinga unless you have to.

Professor Elzinga is incredible! His lectures are all very well organized as he has been teaching at the University for such a long time. You HAVE to go to lectures, though, and take good notes since the vast majority of questions on the midterm exams revolve around the lectures. The midterm exams are essentially a bunch of creative short answer questions with an ambiguous TA grading rubric; so, don't worry too much if you do poorly on them for no apparent reason. The final exam resembles an AP Microeconomics multiple choice section exam, and your exam grade replaces both midterm grades/quiz grades if you do better on it than the other course material (Dutch Knockout).

So Elzinga is low-key a god at UVA, and I did not really understand why until this semester. He has an amazing presence, and the entire lecture hall (around 500 a class) goes quiet when he walks in. I had taken AP microeconomics prior to this course, and that definitely helped me. Even though his lectures don't explain some of the calculations and graphs you're expected to know, the textbook he uses does a really good job. He has you read one of his books for the lecture, but I have thought all of his exams to be fair. Definitely need to pay attention during the lecture though because he explains specific examples you need to know for the tests!! He has a super cool grading system too where your final can take the place of all your other grades if you do better on that. Awesome guy!

So basically Elzinga is a celebrity at UVa and everyone loves him because sure, he is a pretty awesome guy. I've visited him during office hours and he seems to genuinely want to get to know his students. That aside, taking this course was a horrible experience for me because I ended up not having that much of an interest in econ, in fact, I think I came to hate econ more after taking this course lol. I thought that Econ would be a pretty useful course to take and since it fulfills one of the gen ed requirements for the College, I was like why not? If you have similar thoughts like me, STOP. Don’t take econ unless you are REALLY interested in it, on the pre-comm track, or took econ before in high school. Elzinga’s lectures are huge and he doesn’t even cover what’s on the test half of the time; you’ll have to consult the textbook for that. However, he does try to make his lectures more interesting with examples but ultimately, he just focuses on the concepts and not on the say, graphs or equations you’re supposed to remember for the test. Clicker questions aren’t every class, and you only have to get 15 clicker points to get full credit so you don’t really have to attend lecture that much.

Also, I picked Ergene as my TA for the discussion and while his quizzes are hard, he posts multiple problem sets and their answers and that’s more than I can say other TAs do lol.

The exams really killed me though. Although it’s free-response, they are graded quite harshly. If you do want to take this class, be sure to be up-to-date on all the reading and do as many practice problems as you can. Also visit Elzinga’s office hours and talk to him because he’s a cool guy.

As has been said before, Elzinga is a great guy and a decent professor. I got a lot more out of this class than I thought I would, especially for an intro-level course. Yes, the tests may be graded strictly, but this is to ensure that every TA grades the exams consistently across every section. Plus the final grade distribution is based on a curve of the average, so even if you did poorly on an exam, the curve can help you as long as you're above the average. A lot of people also complain that Elzinga does not cover all of the exam material in his lectures. Elzinga will tell everyone specifically at the beginning of the semester that he expects students to supplement lectures with readings from the textbook. Plus there really is no outside work besides the reading, so I think the "work load" was pretty fair. Also, Elzinga makes the final purposefully harder (even though it's multiple choice) to keep people from skipping the first two exams for Dutch Knockout. Overall, whether you're a first-year or a fourth-year, I highly recommend this class.

LOVE Elzinga he's sooooo funny and his lectures are just so fun to go to. ps don't skip a single lecture. Ever. His tests frequently focus on random things that he discussed in class, so you need to carefully remember every detail. He doesn't take attendance, so that's how he rewards people for showing up. also, the class is only 55 minutes long which makes it even better. But ABSOLUTELY DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO THE EXAMS ARE THE WORST

DO NOT TAKE PANDEY AS A TA. It is the day before the exam and I just found out that every other TA responds to questions in e-mails, hands back exams (Why didn't we get our exams back!!), provides slides, notes, practice problems, and actually gives the quizzes in a timely manner instead of giving us two quizzes all semester and then two surprise ones in the last week!!! Take any other TA, seriously, I cannot emphasize this enough

This class is awesome. Unlike a lot of other college classes where you're heading into the exam not really knowing what the test is going to look like, this class is more like a high school class in that you have all the information before you heading into the exam and just really need to grind to do well. Strongly recommend keeping up with all the reading as the textbook is essential to doing well and thoroughly explains concepts that aren't necessarily discussed in lecture in a very coherent way. A lot of people have complained about the online Connect resource and don't like it, but I found it to be very helpful. The practice portion of connect provides multiple choice and fill in the blank questions for every chapter and was really helpful for checking how well I knew a certain portion of the material. Elzinga IS a legend; don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. With a class this huge, some people are bound to not like it, but I really felt like I got a lot out of every lecture. His anecdotes/obvious economic skill AND the attempts he makes to appeal to other subject areas really made for an interesting class, instead of having a teacher that drilled us on basic concepts for 55 minutes twice a week––that's what your TA is for. John Fry was an awesome TA for this course and always let us know what was coming next (quizzes, homework, etc.). The scale Elzinga creates for grades is very forgiving and you'll probably end up doing a lot better than you thought you were doing because of it. I'm not an Econ major and had no prior Econ experience heading into this class and am leaving with a good understanding of basic economic principles and found it to be very engaging.

Lectures are always engaging and material is logical. I really enjoyed econ with Elzinga and it is a relatively easy course as long as you put in some effort into skimming the textbook, understanding the concepts, taking good notes, and actively engaging in discussions. Ended with an A-! I have no complaints!

I loved Mr. Elzinga. He is the kindest, most patient professor. While I found this class challenging, getting to know him and my TA made it worth it. (Ben Thomas is a great TA.) My advice for anyone taking this class is to spend a lot of time with the Colander textbook, not just reading but taking notes and doing practice problems. I'd also recommend going to office hours, both Mr. Elzinga's and your TA's. If the TA you end up with isn't helpful, go to the head TA instead. Being able to ask questions and talk about what I missed on quizzes and tests was invaluable to me. The second test was much harder for me than the first one, but I think a lot of the points I lost were due to rushing, and not taking the time to read each question very carefully. Mr. Elzinga designs the tests so that you have more time than you need--you should take advantage of that, and work slowly. Overall, I'm so happy I took this class, even if I found it a little bit hard--I'm thinking about being an Econ major now!