Creative Problem Solving

     Demand and supply….a phrase that only makes me think of the toilet paper shortage of 2020- yikes. Turns out demand and supply happen in our day to day lives and affect many of the products and activities we enjoy. While I knew a little bit about this topic and the economics of capitalism, I didn’t fully grasp the concept until Macro Economics 252 in which I studied the effects of this and more virtually in the fall semester of 2020. The class taught me a lot more about creative thinking and problem solving in the everyday sense and how to apply it as my artifact shows. The assignment  was to read the newspaper article provided about a detrimental snow storm hitting Florida that would impact the orange farmers and their crops. I was then asked to assess and provide rationalization on the effects the storm would have on the orange crops and to suggest if the storm would increase/decrease orange juice prices and how that would affect the supply and demand. 

 

     While a storm of mother nature hadn’t hit us last year, a storm of disease did so I did research on common household products (like good old Charmin toilet paper) and how these products were affected in worldwide events or tragedies. This helped me achieve one of my first goals which was to utilize resources around me and not just blindly turn to google. Keeping track of current events in newspapers, the news, and journals was a great tool that helped me understand the concept of supply and demand and apply it to multiple things so I could understand it, in its entirety. While I did some outside research to understand other components, like learning how to make a supply and demand chart myself, it gave me the ability to obtain ideas from other sources and gave me the diversity of thought and perspectives from other angels.  Not only did I achieve this goal, I actually found myself more interested in economics and learning how the market works, what influences it, and how it is affected. 

 

     If I had to look back on this essay, I can see that I struggled with some of the technology aspects of the assignment. Even though I learned how to successfully create a supply and demand chart to showcase my rationalization and consensus, I’m glad I gave myself extra time to work on this project! This brings me to goal number two which is to create more time management in my processes for papers and projects so that I have time to correct any problems that may arise before they are due. While I thankfully did not run into too many major problems during this project, I did run into one regarding the supply and demand chart and the functionality. Throughout my paper, I discuss that a decrease in supply will cause the “curve” to shift to the left, and “the decrease in demand will be greater than the decrease in supply, so the demand curve shifts more towards left relative to the supply curve”. Let’s just say, it took me longer than I’d like to admit before I truly could understand 1. How to graph this correctly 2. Once graphed, was the shift going in the correct direction or did I have it backwards? This essay was not intended to take too long, which is why I allotted a full weekend to it. I’m thankful I did not try to cram it all in one day or a night as I felt the frustration of the graph not showing fully how I wanted it to. This took some more problem solving on my end to figure out how to get the application and graph to work as I would like it too. In the end, with the extra time I added to my timeline, I was able to achieve this goal and even utilize a little part of my first goal by working with a friend of mine who is very technology savvy when it comes to applications and graphing on the computer. All in all, in the essay I was able to showcase some of my refined skills such as resourcefulness, and creative problem solving. Now, let’s just hope I don’t have to put these skills to the test in another toilet paper pandemic.