Riel Tetreault

When I came to Halifax, I actually came for the King’s Foundation Year Program. However, I also wanted to continue with math and sciences at Dalhousie. I picked economics because it was considered a science, it related to my interest in politics, and it did not have any labs. I was very bad at labs. I was good at math though, so I took honours calculus. I learned I was only so-so at math. Econ it was. First year econ is, best I can tell, a chore at most schools. I did well, and found it mildly interesting. I was far more taken away by philosophy, in which I did less well. I did enjoy feeling like econ could teach me practical levers through which to interact and influence the world around me. Keeping my options open, I stuck with the more rigorous BSc program in my combined honours of economics and contemporary studies. I grew to love econ, particularly the sort of diagramatic puzzles one encounters in intermediate macro graphs, or the analysis of games found in Strategic Thinking. To the surprise of a party-politics minded younger me, I fell firmly into the camp of microeconomics. I formed strong relationships with my profs, first with Professor Weina Zhou, then Professor Ruth Forsdyke and many others. Their advice solidified my decision to stick with economics. I chose to complete my honours in econ, with an eye to grad school. The honours program had great camaraderie, and it was a well-guided walk through researching that made me eager to keep learning and applying the econ skills I was studying. I got accepted into UBC’s Vancouver School of Economics, with scholarship and fellowship awards, and found out Dalhousie had prepared me very well. In particular, Strategic Thinking and 4th year Micro at Dal did such a good job of preparing me that I had no new material to cover in my master’s level micro course (and I only attended 3 lectures). One year and change after my degree at King’s and Dal, I have now completed my Master’s at UBC with an A+ average and a major research paper on election codes and community well being. I now work at Big River Analytics, pursuing a wide range of topics in my ideal field of Indigenous economics. I am thankful to the Dalhousie Economics Department for sparking my interest in the subject, and providing me with a strong background in the field.