Favorite Class: FIN 320 Money and Banking

When thinking about my favorite class at DePaul, I would say it’s a little more complicated than I thought. I could say it was one of my easier classes, but I don’t think I really enjoyed those classes. Ultimately, I would say my favorite class at DePaul has been Finance 320 – Money and Banking.

At first glance this doesn’t seem like a class that could be a lot of fun, however, this was one of my most memorable classes. The reason why I chose this class is because of the content we learned, the way we learned it, and the professor. Overall, this class was a lot of fun and it never felt hard, even at its most challenging moments.

FIN 320 is a required course for Finance Majors. The class goes over a lot of different aspects of money and banking, just like the title says. We never covered topics too in-depth because it was an intro to this realm of finance, but we learned a lot.

Growing up I was always curious about banking and what happened inside a bank. Why was banking so important to our society and is it something I should know about? This class answered all my questions and more. One notable thing we learned was how the collapse of the 2008 financial markets even occurred. For me, this was an event that I never found an answer to. I always wondered what really happened in a detailed way but I never knew. After taking this class and watching The Big Short a film about this event, I learned the various factors that contributed to this financial crisis.

Another reason I found this class fun was because of how it applied to my real life. I always liked classes where I can take what I learned and use it in real-world applications. With FIN 320, we learned about bonds and US Treasury Notes, which taught me more about investing. We spent a little bit of time in class talking about the stock market and more advanced stock market topics like derivatives. These topics made the stock market comprehensible in my opinion and it is what made the class fun.

Overall this class was enjoyable because of the content and how it filled my curiosity. I learned a lot about banking topics that are useful in the real world while also being enthralled with the class. FIN 320 is definitely a class everyone should take.

~Sneh