Back in the dark days of 1981, I was about to enter my last year of secondary school. It was a time of big decisions. How would I spend my 50p pocket money that week? Should I ask my mate Dave to pass a note to a girl he knew that I fancied? And what should I drop from my final exam list. In our school, you studied eight subjects until the beginning of your final year. Then you had to drop one before the final push for glory.
In my case, it was a choice between History and Economics, or a toss up between the future and the past, as it was explained to me at the time. After some thought,(well as much as I could squeeze in between thinking about girls and football) I decided to drop Economics. I was much more comfortable with the ghosts of the past, than I was with the uncertainty of the future. My previous year in class had thought me that if you put two Economists in a room, you’d end up with three opinions.
It was custom to stand outside class on the first day of final year to break the news to whichever teacher you were spurning. Most of them took it well as you were normally dropping a subject that you hated and were crap at. And the teacher generally held similar opinions about you. I was in a more delicate position. Economics was actually my best subject. I scored top marks in class the previous summer and our teacher; Mr. Dunne treated me like I was John Maynard Keynes.
There were eight of us waiting that day and apart from my good self, the other seven had been told to be there to discuss their future with Mr. Dunne. Some would be told to drop Economics altogether while the rest were been shipped down to the lower level class where the only requirement for entry was that you knew which end of the pencil to use for writing.
Most of them took it well but one poor soul made a last desperate attempt to cling on. “Mr. Dunne, I think I am well placed to excel in Economics, I have a fundamental understanding of the concepts and I think my summer exams demonstrate this”, he said in a staccato voice which suggested that he was repeating a prepared speech his Father had drummed into him the night before.
“You got 14% in your summer exams”, Mr. Dunne said drily. The poor soul looked indignant and his face reddened. “I got 15% sir”, he blurted.
I wanted to point out that there was a 7% difference in their assessments, which was within the margin of error of most economic forecasts. But I sensibly judged that neither of them were in the mood for humor.
Finally I was alone with Mr. Dunne and got to deliver my break up speech. I started with a “It’s not you, it’s me” approach and moved into a more “Can we still be friends” tactic when this wasn’t working. Mr. Dunne was pretty upset and told me I throwing away the chance of a top grade in my final exams. I was prepared for this however and explained that I had confidence that I could obtain the same grade in History. At this point, he asked me to wait where I was while he summoned my History teacher from the staff room. I watched the two of them march towards me and felt happy that my favorite teacher was coming to defend me. Alas, he had surrender in mind.
“Why are you dropping Economics”? He asked. “Mr. Dunne here tells me that you’ll get an A in your Leaving exam.”
“I think I’ll get an A in History too”, I confidently replied.
“No, you won’t, you’ll get a C”, he told me.
I was shocked at the betrayal, but dug my heels in. A year later I opened up my exam results and found that my History teacher was right. I was disappointed and asked myself “if only”. If only he’d been as good at teaching as he was at predictions.
Twenty nines later however I am regretting that I didn’t stick with Mr. Dunne. Who would have guessed that economists would suddenly become sexy? It’s hard to turn on the TV these days or open a newspaper and not see some pointed head guru tell you that the world is going to hell in a handcart. The Irish media is certainly full of that and the website irisheconomy.ie is probably more subscribed these days than pornography. Economists are lining up to say “I told you so” when most of them championed the Celtic Tiger and told the Irish people there would be a soft landing. In hindsight I think they meant that Ireland was going to land in the shit but they didn’t explain it that way.
I notice that five of the top ten bestsellers in Ireland now are written about or by economists. Who would have thought that if I’d just stuck with it, I could have fulfilled my dream and become a published author. I suspect I would have been greedy however and tried to corner more than just the dry economic market. I would have told the story of the death of the Irish Tiger by having vampires attack the Central Bank (for the teenage girl market) while having the female head of the ECB fall madly in love with the evil master of the IMF and have them engage in wild sex in a back room of government buildings while the Minister for Finance filled in the country’s bankruptcy papers upstairs. I can see Hollywood buying up the rights as I type, with Jennifer Aniston and Russell Crowe in the lead parts.
Perhaps I could find a role for Mr. Dunne. Although I dropped economics that year, he thought me enough to see that the bubble was bursting and it was time to get the hell out. For that I am very grateful.
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