About Dr. Lacktorin

Ok, so I had 2 new classes and I have now got to go to all of my classes. First there was Economics, and while it was only an intro I enjoyed it tremendously, probably the class I will learn most from.

Dr.Lacktorin, who I mentioned before, began by talking in a bit of detail about himself (guess he likes that). He claimed to be a troublemaker as a teenager (difficult to believe as he seems rather mellow now). As a result his mom enrolled him into the army and he ended up serving in some very dangerous areas of Vietnam. Luckily he got out of it OK, and at the age of 27 he ended up enrolling into a university as a pre-med student. About 2 years in he ended up following a Japanese girl into Japan (he described as the biggest mistake of his life) and ended up working for a company there as well as attending and graduating from Sophia University. A few years later the company was offering scholarships to go into the states and complete MBA's. Dr. Lacktorin volunteered, but was turned down since the company was concerned that being an American he would take the scholarship and not come back. He ended up quitting the company and going to get an MBA on his own.

After graduating from the University of Chicago he went to work at Wall Street for a few years, before moving to Citibank Japan where he worked as an investment banker. He eventually however, becaome a professor at Sophia University, taking a major pay cut from his banking position. However, he liked the fact that he got to teach and that he got 3 months off a year. In order to improve his standing as a professor he ended up spending 8 years at Keio University to get his Ph.D in Economics.

This is where he ended his autobiography and spoke about how he runs the class. First, he told us that he expects us to read the news and to follow the Nikkei 225, the cost of stock in Japan. He has participation points, he said that he will randomly cal on students in the class and force them to talk, and he expects other people in the class to understand and hear, and if you can't understand or hear you should raise your hand. He said that he is an expert at seeing "eyes that don't understand" (there was a Japanese word for it, can't remember what it is). This exercise however, seemed to be more aimed at the Japanese students who seemed really shy when he called on them.