Learning Journal prompt: 

Explain a time in your life when you experienced opportunity cost. Why did you make the
decision? What was another alternative that you could have made? Discuss how scarcity
influenced your decision.

To begin with, "opportunity cost" is defined as "the loss or gain of making a decision." If you
had to choose between buying and selling a stock, you could make immediate gains from the
sale, but you would lose out on future gains from the investment.” (KENNON 2020). Please see
the following options. After making a decision this is due to scarcity, which occurs when the
available resources are insufficient. Fulfill all human needs and desires because human desire is
limitless, people require a scale. That will assist him or her in prioritizing among the various
options.

When I had the opportunity to attend the University of The People and at the same time received
an email that I had been admitted to work, I had to choose one and forgo the other one. I
therefore chose to forgo the job opportunity, which happens to be the opportunity cost, in order
to undertake my studies at the University of The People.

I chose to take the University of The People’s offer to study with them and forgo the work offer,
since I believe that with education, I can improve my business skills. I preferred to study and
better my skills than work and get a salary since I have always wanted to pursue a professional
career as an entrepreneur and later be my own boss rather than being employed.

As an optimist person who has always dreamed of becoming a unique entrepreneur, I aim at
contributing to the social economic development of my country by paying taxes and creating Job
opportunities for others. I therefore chose to undertake my studies since I discovered that The
University of the People offers Business Administration, which will help me achieve my dreams
for the betterment of my future as compared to being employed now.

The other option I had was to work and earn money, which could help me have a better standard
of living, but I gave priority to the scale of preference I had applied. The job would have
benefitted me greatly, but learning business administration is more important to me than working
because I want to improve my self-employment skills rather than being employed.

“The basic economic problem of scarcity refers to the disparity between limited – that is, scarce
– resources and theoretically limitless wants. People must make decisions about how to allocate
resources efficiently in order to meet basic needs and as many additional wants as possible in this
situation” (J BOYLE, 2021). Scarcity has influenced my decision in such a way that the
resources that have been limited are time, and it is impossible to perform both tasks of learning at
the University of the People and working. As a result, time has been limited. Due to a lack of
time, I must choose between the two in order to achieve a high level of learning performance.

(Words 519)
 References

J BOYLE, M. (2021, January 16). Scarcity definition. Retrieved from

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity.asp KENNON, J. (2020, December 22).

Understanding the basics of opportunity cost. Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/what-

is-opportunity-cost-357200