A 13-Hour Wait for Microeconomics?

Part of coming to grips with the fact that my four-year free pass expires in May is embracing the quirks and uniqueness of going to a really, really, really dorky school-then realizing that I have a lot of work to do to resist making this a typical Columbia year.

That's why I was particularly excited when the night before classes started I finally got to camp out for a sports-related activity like my friends at normal schools. Goodbye Morningside Heights. Hello Durham, N.C.

Monday night was the first time I could share an experience with my friend Lenny, who has sat through sludgy mid-Atlantic winter nights waiting for tickets to see Coach K do his thing against UNC at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium, an arena that does not look like a middle school multi-purpose room.

Normally I wouldn't wait 13 hours in a 4 by 25 foot long corridor illuminated by buzzing fluorescent light and peppered with signs encouraging students to join the economics society, apply for various research positions, and come to the latest Jeffrey Sachs seminar on sustainable development, but this was my window into the world of the Cameron Crazies. I was waiting for a spot in Econ W4911.001: Seminar in Microeconomic Theory with Professor Sunil Gulati. And I had a long, long night ahead of me.

So, at 8:16 p.m., I stepped off the elevator on the 9th floor of IAB and saw my line buddies Charley, Aaron, Jamie, and Bryce. They were already an hour into a game of Hold 'em and were watching the bonus features from the BoSox's 1,000,000-DVD "Faith Rewarded - The Historic Season of the 2004 Boston Red Sox" (thank god the only respectable memory in the team's history). I bought in, ordered my usual No. 34 from Saigon Grill and fought as hard as I could to watch all of the fourth season of Seinfeld instead of the DVD that was ruining Charley's computer. After all, Econ W4911.001: Seminar in Microeconomic Theory is a course in sports economics.

Its description reads as follows: The seminar will focus on an economic analysis of the sports industry. Topics covered will include economics of sports leagues, the labor market for professional athletes, sports marketing and broadcasting, economic impact of teams & stadiums, and anti-trust policies. A number of guest speakers from the sports world (including the professional leagues and media industry) will be featured. Previous speakers have included David Stern (Commissioner, NBA), Tom Clarke (President, Nike), Jonathan Kraft (Vice-Chairman, New England Patriots), David Downs (President, Univision Sports), and Bob Batterman (Labor Counsel, NHL). One textbook and a number of separate readings will be assigned. Seminar students are expected to actively participate in class discussions, make an in class presentation and write a term paper on an agreed upon topic.

Pretty cool, eh? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now you understand why my demand curve for this course was perfectly inelastic and I had to camp out.

If I had arrived outside the department at 8 a.m., like most people waiting to sign up for a seminar, I would have had to register for Econ W4918: Econometrics Seminar and would have to study some annoying data about financial markets. Instead, the 12 members of my class guaranteed spots (those placed on a wait list had to interview with Prof. Gulati later in the day) could paint E-C-O-N-O-M-E-T-R-I-C-S on our chests and S-U-C-K-S on our backs.

As the night inched along, the only things that kept us sane in the pale-yellow lit corridor were Kramer, Domino's thin-crust bacon pizza, and the Grinch-sized smiles that spread across our faces as we caught the looks of frustration, anger, and spite on other senior economics majors who came by on the hour hoping they would be the first ones on Prof. Gulati's roster.

We were even graced by the Professor himself. Gulati stopped by his office around 10 p.m. to "get something," which I think really meant that he called his other Econ professor friends and asked them to pay up because his class was already full and theirs wouldn't be for at least 10 hours. After all, we 15 in Econ W4911.001: Seminar in Microeconomic Theory have immense pride in our ability to use econometric theory and regression analysis to look at past arrival times vs. successful registration and compute the minimal wait time to ensure acceptance into Econ 4911.001.

Our calculations paid off and I finally got a glimpse into the sports fanatic world. Now Lenny, when you remind me about the time you pounded that bottle of JD while in line waiting for tickets for that UNC game, I can counter with how I almost passed out applying game theory formulas to seminar supply and demand functions to derive the optimal arrival time for course registration. Ha!